Observations on Art 10.9

As you may or may not know for the past week or so I have been wandering around the Occupy Wall Street protests. I've been taking photos, taking it all in, honestly trying to understand what it means and I want to write about it some but that isn't what this post is for. You can ask ten people what makes a good photo and get ten different answers most of which have to do with composition or lighting. Depth, lines, perception, all have their place in a good photo but I have my own opinion. I really don't worry about any of it much when I'm taking shots, I just shoot what I see, and I don't think my work is any better than average.

I took this photo yesterday near the OWS protest in Zuccotti Park. To me a good photo needs no title and I posted this on Flickr (l) without one. A good photo tells the viewer everything he or she needs to know, it pulls at your heart and kicks you in the gut at the same time. It makes you think. You may not think this is a good photo, you probably don't think this is even the best I have ever taken, but it fills all my criteria.

I look at her and I just hurt.

Observations from the Edge 10.8

I was sitting in the bar watching the Penn State game as a crowd reported to be in the thousands was forming in Washington Square Park, just blocks away from our apartment. After the game I'm going to go and see what is happening there because I heard most of the protesters were planning on moving back to Zuccotti Park in a march they don't have a permit for. There is also a large NYPD presence around the Square and they are saying they will not allow anybody to remain in the park after the midnight curfew. The curfew thing was rather surprising to me because in my almost two years here I never knew there was one. I figure they can't arrest me anyway because I live there but I'm hoping it doesn't turn into a repeat of last weekend's Brooklyn Bridge fiasco and its 700 arrests.

This video has some totally awesome photos in it but I'm not so sure about the choice of music. I would have gone for a Muse tune or something like that because one can be an anarchist but one doesn't have to be a bore.

Occupy Wall Street from Vas on Vimeo.

sunday update - Penn State beat Iowa 13-3 and now have an overall record of 4-1 and are 2-0 in the Big Ten. Far from the best State team ever, no settled quarterback and the wins are sloppy, they have an awesome defense and they do seem to win. JoePa continued his trend of leading the team onto the field and coaching the first half from the sideline and the second half from the box. Attendance was announced as over 100,000 compared to 46,000 at Friday night's Phillies game.

As for Washington Square Park, until I got there everybody had left except some NYPD officers and a man with green skin. I honestly didn't want to know about green skin man so I just wandered through and kept going. As far as I know no arrests were made at the WSP protest and the crowd was supposedly around 3,000.