I did a meditations on photography post recently with the woman posing photos in the art gallery. What I wrote in that post, I kept in mind when I was taking the photos I’m about to describe here.

I went to the Jazz Age Lawn Party as you saw in the other entries. Going to New York usually involves passing through Times Square, as it is where the bus stops and of course where one can usually take all sorts of weird photos. And where weird is, I’m usually nearby just taking a photo of it.

So I went to Times Square to shoot a statue called “Unconditional Surrender” by Seward Johnson. It is a statue of the iconic Alfred Eisenstadt photo of the nurse and sailor kissing after the declaration of the end of World War II. Now that is an iconic photo and the statue is quite interesting and absolutely impossible to get a good photo of. I’ve taken photos of it before and no matter what, the photo you take of it is flat and boring. How can shooting a standing object that is so iconic and larger than life be so incredibly difficult? Well, it was.

I shot as quickly as I could. Did I get a good photo? Well, time to judge:

These are fine. I tried several different ways, different lenses and I guess they are fine. Maybe more wide angle, maybe more buildings, who knows.

Well, then we come to the other photographic highlight of any trip to Times Square. The place is not only populated by angry Elmos and Metal Hero Friends, I mean Ironman, but also naked painted ladies. The first time I saw that, I couldn’t believe that someone would go marching around basically naked in a place like Times Square. Now I’ve seen it a couple of times and it seems kind of normal to me to see that. I mean its not normal, although considering how many clicks the mostly nude man in the thong got, something that the public is clamoring for.

On a photography note, these were pretty easy to take. The moving object was easy to find and situate in a photographic fashion. And that sign about Jesus behind the argument (photo TK) was just pure luck. New York, New York, the town so nice they named it twice.

People of Times Square, welcome back to my blog: