PHOTO CHALLENGE: THE PEDESTRIAN
Garry had a bumper sticker on his old red Mustang convertible that said: “So many pedestrians, so little time.”
Night, midtown Boston
Cruel? Only if you weren’t trying to drive cross-town in Boston where pedestrians pay no attention to signs, crosswalks, or even oncoming trucks and cars. If they feel like crossing the street, they step into the road and ramble casually across.
If you get too close, they pound on your car because traffic regulations don’t have anything to do with them.
On the street
I do not know if all cities are as bad as Boston, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover they are. In New York, it took them years to figure out ways to control both cars and walkers without fatalities.
Out here, in the country, people are surprisingly polite about people crossing the road. I suppose because there aren’t so many of us helps. The roads aren’t as packed with traffic. It’s safe to slow down.
Nonetheless, traffic will stop and wait for you to cross. After which, they wave to you. Using all five fingers.
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That snow photo is wonderful.
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I got lucky. I was waiting in the car for Garry who’d gone into the store and it started to snow. One of those ones with the big, fat flakes that you can actually photograph. It only lasted about 5 minutes, and I just happened to have the camera in my lap!
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“Action” shots, people going about their daily routine (or not) but eloquent all the same.
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And even the dullest shots look so much more interesting in black & white 🙂
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It adds an edge! I wonder if it’s because we are now used to colour when once all we had was black and white, still, it has an edge!
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Probably, although a lot of photographers work mostly in black and white, including my granddaughter.
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They are beautiful. There’s something uniquely special. I’ve always enjoyed them as there’s an element of intrigue I can’t define
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The people look like they are coming from old “noir” films 🙂
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Yes they do. When I think back on those studio shots they made stars unique set apart somehow
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The black & white 8X10 was THE standard publicity shot until recently, and even now, most actors include at least one black & white with their other PR shots. There’s a lot of drama in a black & white portrait that color never hits.
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It’s true. Sometimes it adds shock value, intrigue, drama, or can disguise and change edges. There is a purity to it too.
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I still find those B&W pedestrians are from a different era. The colour photos are just so now.
Leslie
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I do love black & white cityscapes. There’s something so wonderfully gritty about black & white.
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That’s true.
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I’ve only noticed such pedestrian rudeness in the city after ballgames let out… and since I’m usually in a hurry to get home, it becomes a dangerous game of chicken when they decide to walk out in front of me!
The only other place I’ve noticed obnoxious pedestrian behavior is on college campuses. At both the college I went to and the smaller one nearby, the students believe they have a God given right to cross the street wherever and whenever they choose, and we drivers must obey the impossibly low campus police-posted speed limits (Usually less than what the average car can coast at while in drive, and even less than what you’d find in an actual school zone with non-grown up children!) and stop on a dime so they and their $3 cup of Starbucks can safely make it to their Applied Assholery 101 class on time.
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The OTHER place is any touristy town along the east coast. People seem to think they are in a theme park and they sort of stroll into the street without so much as looking to see what’s happening. They get all glazed and lost. It must be the salt air on the beach.
I didn’t drive when I went to college. I was nearly 30 before I learned. I know. Weird, eh? But when I went to school, most of us didn’t have cars. We walked. The world was young and new.
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I didn’t get my license until my senior year, and even then, didn’t have my own car until I was 25. I walked in college, but I followed all those rules about looking both ways and all that when crossing the street… which I quickly learned was not the norm on campus…
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I got hit by a car crossing the street near home when I was — I think maybe 14? I was pretty careful about cars. Getting hit ONCE was MORE than enough!
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Yet another Montreal-Boston similarity. They say you can spot a tourist in Montreal because he or she will be the one waiting for the light to turn green before crossing.
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Wow … waiting for the light. How … quaint 😀
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Some fine walking shots.
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Thank you. I need to get into Boston again one of these days. Traffic. I love the city, I hate the parking and the traffic.
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We only had a couple of days in Boston and it was pouring with rain, but even so, we were very impressed, though it was hair-raising returning the hire car across town. Traffic truly ruins our towns and cities.
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Traffic in Boston is as bad as New York these days. It wasn’t that bad when I moved there in 1988, but in the past decade, it has gone from bad to really AWFUL. And they’ve stripped away almost all the parking places. We’ve pretty much given up on going to Boston. We can only get there by car (no trains, no buses from here) and it takes forever to drive the 65 miles.
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Shame you have no public transport. I really feel this ought to be a basic human right. Ours isn’t too hot either, and we’re ever threatened with its disappearance.
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Pedestrians are everywhere, but make interesting photos. Love seeing your photos of Boston street life.
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I wish I got more of an opportunity to shoot on the street. We aren’t in Boston very often anymore — these days, almost never.
Here, after dark, the streets are empty. Probably because other than the supermarket (open until 10 except on Sunday), everything is closed and even when it’s open, you don’t see much foot traffic. Everyone has a car. Everyone has TWO cars. And we wonder why traffic gets so bad!
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