Magic moment
For as long as I have been photographing in Central Park I always wanted to travel to this little pond that I spotted on all the park maps just off of 101st street on the west side. However because I always started from the southern end of the park, on my trips from Staten Island I always ended up taking so many pictures along the way up the park that the sun set in the sky long before I got there, and I would have to turn around and go home every time - until today. For the first time ever I made it here just as the sun had disappeared behind the trees. As I walked around the picturesque willow tree lined pond I spotted these two conversing on this great looking wood bench. I loved this scene that these two created talking to each other under this tree. For almost the entire time that I photographed them however, their backs were to me. Since the branches of the tree were too high up to include in the shot, I took in half the trunk to give the sense of the scene I was observing. But that created a lot of dead space, as the only thing to the left of the bench at the time was a headless goose that almost never stopped pruning it's feathers on the other side of my view. With both their backs to me as they talked, it made for an ok image, but nothing special.
Then the girl started to push her backpack to the end of the bench with her left hand, and turned to face her friend. Suddenly the excitement meter went off in my head, and I zoomed in a bit tighter, keeping a little bit of the trunk in view, and waited until she was almost settled in, but still maintaining a little tension in her pose, then I fired off my camera.
Later when I was going over my shots for the day, and came to this scene, I noticed that my headless goose had been joined by several other feathered friends filling in the dead spot perfectly. Everything in the scene came together to create a perfect moment in time on this, the last scene I photographed, at the end of what was my first ever "candid only day", a day in which I ended up capturing more great candid images in that one afternoon, then I had ever managed to collect in my entire life. All of which is why when I look back at all of the candid shots I've taken since, this photo is still probably my sentimental favorite - not my best, but my favorite none the less.
