I decided I was going to put myself out there and try to meet more people with common interests. I would try to be less introverted. I would make an effort to engage more.
So I joined the camera club in the winter. So I have participated in meetings. So I signed up for a photo walk on the south side of Syracuse that was organized by The Stand, a community newspaper that holds the photo walk every year; they use the photos that are obtained for a spread in the paper and are somehow involved in a photo competition as well.
There were 4-5 different photo walks this year. I purposefully chose the south side walk because I expected more photo club members to attend that particular walk; it was being led by a member, Jeff Perkins.
As a pessimist/nihilist, I did not attend the event thinking that any images that I would capture would have any impact on anyone or anything. Frankly, I would be skeptical of the impact of a small community newspaper in a digital age even without a healthy dose of nihilism, but it provided me an opportunity to step outside my comfort zone: meeting strangers at the walk and photographing strangers in their environment. The environment itself (south side of Syracuse) was not discomforting; I have worked there on and off for nearly a decade. Approaching people as a random photographer rather than a physical therapist, though? That would be no easy feat, I thought.
So I left that morning with my kit, which looks very street-oriented (but is just what I am willing to afford). I mounted my trusty 25mm 1.8 on my EM-5ii and placed the the 17mm and 45mm in the bag with a flash and some water. Other folks? There were a few bridge cameras in the lot. A new Fuji xe-4, and quite a few larger full frame bodies with zooms. Anyway, meeting our guides (Jeff and Reggie, a life-long resident in the community) we started on our way and walked only 50 feet before we got to hear Jeff’s sales pitch.
Jeff is tall, loud, confident, and enthusiastic. He is the guy who can (and probably will) approach every attendee at a large party. He is the opposite of me. He was there to take street portraits and he was working to get them – perhaps for himself but certainly to make the experience a positive one for the participants. He didn’t need to convince the first 2 folks at all (one of whom was Darius, pictured above). They were into it and seemed to genuinely enjoy posing for the cameras. Then there were some children who had passed us by and then turned back around to try to get their pictures taken. This was the beginning of what I would eventually distance myself from.
Throughout the walk – being judgemental as I am – I noticed that many of the folks who were taking pictures were oblivious. This time, they had stopped the kids on the sidewalk at the curb cut-out for a busy parking lot. Later they would huddle around every little child that they could. They would walk through the neighborhood to capture images that ultimately upset some of the residents. All the while, the photographers were obtaining images that were probably graphically substantive, but (from a distance) looked like stealing.
I wish there was a lesson for me to impart on folks, but there isn’t, so I won’t try. I will only share this: the optics are not great when a bunch of white people with $2500 camera-kits are walking through impoverished and predominantly black neighborhoods and huddling about and photographing every young black child they can find. Nor does it look good when they are standing in front of the most well-maintained house on the block with a freshly mowed lawn, and they only point their camera up, to get an image of the mylar balloon that is wrapped around the telephone wires above. In short, it was privilege on safari, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
So I did my own thing.
I grabbed pictures of things that would never land in the paper or win a contest.
Cracked sidewalks on W Newell Street offer opportunities for the unwelcome. 
Like Tears in the Rain
Early on, I walked ahead with Cliff, who shared with me and another participant the story of how he lost his son to gun violence and how he works throughout the community to advocate for non-violence. He asked me to walk with him to where his son had been killed, to take a picture of him next to the tree that was planted in his son’s memory. I would have posed and positioned him differently, but he had a plan and he only needed someone to execute it for him. This was his image, not mine … and I was more than happy to serve. I would later share the images with him via text and send him a mounted print.
I would then spend the remainder of the time walking with Reggie; he would share with me stories of his growing up in the city, what he sees as fueling the ills of the community, and sharing his vision of how to try to be a positive influence. I would watch Reggie talk with anyone and in a manner that I could relate to. When I was walking with Cliff, he was Mr Energy, the hit-and-run type … which is cool for him and authentic. Reggie was equally authentic, but in a slower and more relational sort of way. He was listening to and engaging with folks at a level that the group wasn’t and the conversation that he and I had was more fulfilling than walking around a neighborhood looking for images that confirmed my biases while discussing f-stops and exposure triangles (although, to be fair, I doubt that is what was being discussed).
Lewis points out the repair work that is being down over the porch of his home by Scott McIntosh. 
Scott turns to us to talk about the work he is doing for Lewis Thomas.
After the walk was completed, I would wait in the lot for 15-20 minutes so that I could capture a portrait of Reggie … it would be my only real “keeper” from the day. Reggie too would receive a print.
In the end, I learned a little bit about myself. I learned that I need to create images in a manner that fit my persona and my philosophy. I don’t think that what any one of us does in this world really makes much of a difference on a large scale. We are, for the most part, replaceable cogs in a machine that could operate fine without us and you only need to visit your local cemetery for evidence of lives that have all been forgotten and only missed by a few. But it is those few that give us meaning, the few who we engage with at a deeper and more personal level. As Rachel Noemi Remen would say, there is meaning in service.
I think that portraits achieve their potential when they do the same. There is service in bearing witness with a camera … the photographer – not unlike the physical therapist – only needs to slow down, be present, and listen before pressing the shutter button. That is a skill, it turns out, I have been practicing for quite some time.