Easy Rider Motorcycle
In March 2012 I had the idea to complete my portfolio, there was a missing piece that I need to fill to call myself a fine art photographer. That piece was street photography. It was hard for me to just go out to the streets of Philadelphia and start shooting people. Street photograph requires a mental discipline, so I had to prepare my mind.
The first thing one has to decide is what kind of street photography does one want to do? There are two basic approaches, what one calls street candid. This approach is where one approaches a person of interest and asks for permission to take their photo. The other approach is to make oneself invisible to the scene and capture without the people or things know you are taking the photograph. I chose to do candid and ask for permission and was prepared for rejection. A funny thing happened, out of 50 people who I photographed, only one declined my offer, which was shocking.
I am adding my images from that period 2012.
This photograph reminded me of Peter Fonda, I love Triumph Motorcycles.
I loved the 60s and my favorite flick “Easy Rider” with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, The soundtrack by Steppenwolf “Born to wild was playing in my head when I took shoot in Philadelphia. IMHO this Triumph motorcycle is one of the finest motorcycles ever made.
Steppenwolf’s first two singles were “A Girl I Knew” and “Sookie Sookie”. The band finally rocketed to worldwide fame after their third single “Born to Be Wild” was released in 1968, as well as their version of Hoyt Axton’s “The Pusher” and were prominently used in the 1969 cult film Easy Rider (both titles originally had been released on the band’s debut album).[3] In the movie, “The Pusher” accompanies a drug deal, and Peter Fonda stuffing dollar bills into his Stars & Stripes-clad fuel tank, after which “Born to Be Wild” is heard in the opening credits, with Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding their Harley choppers through the American West. The song, which has been closely associated with motorcycles ever since, introduced to rock lyrics the signature term “heavy metal”[3] (though not about a kind of music, but about a motorcycle: “I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder, racin’ with the wind…”). Written by Dennis Edmonton, who had begun using the pen name Mars Bonfire, the song had already reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1968.[3] It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[5]
Nyc-street-photography
Man-on-the-street-2
Comment
Some great pictures and very interesting that you approached many of them for permission. Intriguing!