New York Public Library #5

New York Public Library #5, originally uploaded by an untrained eye (is elsewhere).

April 13th, 2006 - New York, United States

When I visited New York in April 2006 - I like to try to get there at least once a year if I can, so invigorating and exciting do I find it - I had hardly taken a photograph in six months. I wandered the streets looking for the iconic (or, failing that, the stereotypical) Big Apple shots, and though I half-heartedly took one or two snaps of a young man leaning against a wall on 5th Avenue playing the saxophone, with the Empire State Building looming in the background, I found I hadn't quite got my street photography mojo back. It had taken me a long time to get up the courage to take candid shots in public back in Geneva less than a year earlier, and not having done so for so long, I reverted to my natural discretion and self-consciousness.

Eventually I decided to give up and went into the New York public library behind Bryant Park, where, ironically, an exhibition of street photography was being shown. Once I had been round the exhibition I explored more of the magnificent building with its astonishing grandeur and gorgeous artworks. Finally, exhausted - I had walked over 120 blocks in the day - I sat down on the bench opposite the one in this picture with the intention merely of resting, only to have my photographer's instinct ignited by the arrival of a young Japanese couple.

This and the next photo of the couple in black and white may not strictly speaking be considered street photographs, but to me they represent the best I have so far achieved in the genre.