Reflections on an Impromptu Photo Shoot

At this stage, it happens fairly often: a conversation with a stranger that eventually leads to a photo. Sometimes I approach them, though often it’s the other way around. Drawn to the vintage gear – true especially if I am carrying one of my Rolleiflexes – someone asks a question and eventually becomes curious about having their portrait taken.

This might be rather annoying if I were a landscape or architectural photographer. But as a generalist who ventures into street photography, I have come to view such moments as gifts. Even in the harried world of New York City, a dialogue between strangers sometimes unfolds, lasting long enough on occasion for me to make a series of photos.

These impromptu photo shoots are not only enjoyable for me but are becoming more and more common in my work. The people I’m photographing are typically not folks I might meet in my ordinary daily routines. Sometimes our conversations are perfunctory, other times quite animated; these emotions often find their way into the frame. My favorite moment is when they offer a thought about something they might do to help a picture click. To me this reflects their investment in making something meaningful.

I generally share my contact info and offer to send scans or darkroom prints. It can be interesting to see who takes me up on the offer of a print versus the many people who are satisfied with a digital capture.

Sometimes folks ask me what I do with the photos, a question that stumps me. As I am not on social media, the answer used to be “nothing,” though I suppose this can change now that I share my work here on 35mmc. Over time I have come to realize that these photo sessions help me to experience myself in a different way. The prints and the binders of negatives, like the shelves of ceramics in a potter’s studio, give weight and substance to my life as a photographer.

The following series, seven photos including the featured image, happened as I struck up conversation recently with a young man on a subway bound deep into Brooklyn. He noticed the old film camera (a screw-mount Leica) in my hands, while I noticed and liked his look, especially his long, tufted chin-beard, which seemed like it must be a point of pride (he later said that it was). He kindly agreed to my request for a photo:

As we spoke further about his day and the meeting he’d just come from, he talked about having done some modeling in the past and seemed excited at the prospect of making more photos.

This led to two sets of images. The first, on the train platform at the terminus of the Q line, was taken with the same Leica on color film (Kodak UltraMax 400):

Gathering momentum – this first set felt like a warmup – I asked if he would be willing to pose for a few more shots with the other camera I had kept until then in my bag, my 1960 Tele-Rolleiflex (my absolute favorite camera for portraits).

We did these shots outdoors in the noonday sun on the Coney Island Boardwalk. While the close-framing 135mm f4 Zeiss Sonnar lens removed much of the context — the photos in fact could have been taken anywhere — I think this second set captured something significant about him, or at least about how I’d come to perceive the 25 year-old as our conversation drew to a close. For me his Prince Regent’s bearing, latent in the other images, is at last revealed in the set’s final shot, hands down my favorite of the day.

A roll of Tri-X 400 and twenty minutes later, we’d finished the impromptu photo session and each moved on with the afternoon.

Technical notes: color photos were shot with a 1933 Leica III on Kodak UltraMax 400 using a Canon LTM 50mm f1.4 lens; monochrome images are from Tri-X 400 negatives shot on a 1960 Tele-Rolleiflex whose native lens is the venerable 135mm f4 Zeiss Sonnar. Negatives were processed and scanned at home with a Fujifilm XT-50 mirrorless camera and 200mm f2.8  Fujinon macro lens, converted with the FilmLab app and lightly adjusted/color corrected in Photoshop. The developer used for the black and white negatives was Kodak HC-110.

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