“Fuck you man”

The story behind this image starts as a familiar one.  I’m out shooting downtown and something catches my eye. I quickly frame up and hit the shutter.  A few weeks later I look at the negatives and it either worked out or it didn’t.  Sometimes when I get the images back the images, the ones I was positive were going to be keepers turn out to be shitty and sometimes vice versa.  That’s jus the way it goes

There is however a rare third scenario when I make an image that I think is going to be good and it turns out to be amazing for completely different reasons than I ever expected.  The legs shot I wrote about a few days back is one of those rarities… this image is another.  When I made this I was facing away from the subway station, waiting for an interesting subject to approach.  When I saw this guy, all pissy, all grey with that bald head tearing his way towards the subway, I had only a split-second to spin 180 degrees to catch him heading towards the escalators.  I whipped around while framing him in the right third and then panned up slightly to come level.  In that split second of panning up my eye wasn’t on my subject, it was framing the background and then I hit the shutter.

So flash forward a few weeks and I’m at the Icon with the loupe and the light table checking out my shots.  I pan over to this shot and start laughing my ass-off.  This fucking guy gave me the finger.  What’s even funnier is that when I think back, I totally remember someone saying “Fuck you man!” Thing is though, there’s always someone screaming “fuck you” or “eat shit” or just howling at the top of their lungs so it totally didn’t register at the time.  

Anyway, I just want to say thank you Mr. Fuck-you-man–you made my fucking day.  Oh, and fuck you too buddy :)

Shot on my Mamiya 6MF on Kodak Tri-X film, pushed +1 by the Icon.