Alone
In the top picture, the jarring image of a man staring into the distance, alone in his thoughts, in a teeming city of 1.5 million people caught my attention. The setting is a homey little café hidden away in the Reading Terminal Market in Center City Philadelphia. I decided to take this photo for my Urban Photography class at Moore College of Art. I was drawn to the cheerful aspects of this scene so I focused on the background—the family photos, the cups and saucers, and the utilitarian coffee machine. Although I took this photo in color, I stripped it down to black and white on my computer. The lights muddied the scene’s colors and the black and white image brought clarity to the photo.
In the second picture, I stood for five minutes in front of the glass window. How best could I capture this lone man? The boxes and wall created a natural frame that boxed him in. I shot the photo with the man alone and focused in the midground with the background bleached out. I really liked the mix of objects and the lone man. Sitting in front of my computer, I used Lightroom to focus attention on the man in the orange hat by pumping up the orange and eliminating the distracting background lights by making them cool blue. This was a self directed photo I took for my Urban Photography class at Moore College of Art.
