Day of the Living JewAss

Sometimes, all too seldom, I strike pure gold. The enraged hooker was certainly a 24-karat moment. And this was too.

Here we see three different people, reacting in three delicious ways to the rapacious, rampaging JewCam. Plus one hallucinatory, oblivious apparition, transfixed by the neon extravaganza before her dazzled eyes.

This photo, as you'll notice, was taken under sunlight in the Times Square area. It was some months before the scare. There was plenty of light, but in order to startle people, I set the camera to flash.

My favorite film is "Night of the Living Dead" - the 1968 black and white George Romero classic. The diverse group of ghouls above lack only morgue tags to qualify for the greatest horror movie ever made. Here is a still from it.


There's a moment early in the flick when Johnny menacingly croaks to his dear sister, "They're coming to get you, Baaaarbara!" I had a Barbara moment when I first saw this Times Square image pop onto my monitor. Eeeeek!

As a homage to Romero's masterpiece, I present this photo in both living color and in mortiferous monochrome.

If you haven't seen the movie, please do.

And if you're in Times Square, remember, Alan's coming to get you!

My ass, still on the line

By 9:30, the night of the Times Square scare, things were truly tense. Theater-goers were trapped in the snarl and confusion. People could not reach their cars, hotels or other destinations.
New York's Finest, surprisingly, were acting like perfect assholes, herding people around in a most offensive manner - barking orders and exacerbating the unpleasantness.
The corn-fed tourists were in a tizzy; wide-eyed, intimidated, they saw their dream-trip to the Big Apple morph into a nightmare.
The flash of my camera always alarms people in crowds. It's a type of photography I've become fond of. But this was gold! The subjects were already wary, scared, defensive - their reflexes primed for disaster.
My Canon emits some preparatory flashes in order to focus. This consists of a barrage of blinding pops of light. By the time the shutter opens, an unprepared person in the line of fire feels as if assaulted by a photon machine gun. And the second and third shots - the "deer-in-the-headlights" ones - produce the most satisfying results.
Luckily, so preoccupied am I with the logistics of shooting, I'm largely unaware of the danger. This I see later, when editing the photos. I do, though, catch glimpses of contorted faces, and attack or defense positions. But before they can affect my nerve, I've marauded on down the sidewalk, flashing away at fresh prey.
So far, nothing bad has happened to me, though I've taken thousands of photos under these conditions.
These are two delightful reactions to my full frontal assault.

Momentary respite for my ass

Not everyone was seized by latent panic, and infuriated and freaked out by the hirsute, aging hippie flashing his cam in their faces.
These two chaps (Middle Eastern, I think - so they should have feared police profiling that night), saw me aiming at them and assumed the joyful, hilarious and affectionate pose you see in the photo.
Oddly enough, the man on the left is wearing a shirt printed with Edgar Allen Poe's sweetly strange, necrophiliac lament, "Annabel Lee". Poe used opium and laudanum and this piece has a lugubrious, dreamy flavor redolent of these inspiring substances. In the first few stanzas, we hear how intensely the poet and Ms. Lee adored each other - and how she died of a "chill".
The final stanza says:

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Did our friend realize what he was wearing? Is it racist/classist/Eurocentric of me to assume that he didn't? Well, so be it. He didn't! There. I said it. Sue me.

Risking my ass (cheek 2)

It was the night of the recent Times Square scare. Nerves were on edge. The hordes of tourists knew something drastic was happening, but the cops, when asked, said things like "You'll read about it in the papers tomorrow.", or "There was a fire in a car.", or "It's nothing, folks. Now keep moving." Many streets were closed and strategies had to be devised to get to one's destination.
I frequently visit the area to take photos of people in crowds and it was obvious to me the atmosphere was very different that night. The tourists were skittish. Suspicious. Alarmed. Just under the surface, panic lurked
I had no idea what the "nothing, folks" was but was thrilled by its results on my subjects' faces as I flashed them mercilessly. Not only were they, as usual, angry and surprised; they were frightened as well. Who could ask for a better mix of emotions for the lens?
I took more than 500 photos that night. Editing them was a delightful task.
Here's one of my favorites. "If looks could kill..." came to mind when I first saw these amiable folks glaring at me from the Mac.

Risking my ass

I frequently risk my shapely JewAss taking photos of people in crowds. I boldly march down a crowded sidewalk or cross a teeming intersection, snapping away, right in the faces of my subjects. Many of them get very angry at the intrusion and it is that moment of fury I love to capture.
Nighttime is the best time to elicit fantastic angry expressions. The flash does the trick. The second flash photo is the money shot, once they're reacting to the first one.
So far, I've escaped unscathed, but not uncursed and unshouted at.
One night, I saw this splendid prostitute in Times Square and started photographing her. Noticing the flash, she glared at me and shouted, What the fuck you doing, asshole?! Taking some photos of a beautiful lady, I replied...let me take a few more. Take one more fucking photo and it'll be the last fucking photo you ever take, fucker!, she snarled. Naturally, I took a few more. This is the final one.