“Old Friends.”

* Preface *

“I know I’ve been neglecting to post on my blog. I could hit you all with excuses about how I’ve been traveling the world and shooting since March in India, Nepal and about 7 different states here in the U.S.. I could go on and on about how time seemed to have moved so quickly because of the flights, the bus rides, the couch-hopping and the friend-visiting. I could even talk about the wonderful two months I was able to spend in California with my beautiful 10-year old daughter and how I barely had time enough to pull the trigger, let alone find a wifi signal and try to update my blog every few days. I could say all those things…but I won’t. Instead I’ll just say that ‘I’m sorry’ and that I was ‘busy’. I’m glad to be back however, thanks for being patient! As you can probably tell I’ve revamped my website. I have some snazzy new blog ideas to begin using, as well as some feature stories to write about some of the things that I’ve shot during my absence: beaches in South Carolina, MLB games, Occupy Wall Street, models, snow-covered mountains in Colorado, NCAA football games, old friends, Alcatraz, my beautiful little girl and so much more. For now however, we’ll just start off with a new series of posts…smaller, but more intimate.”

“They’ll be called: The Story Behind The Shot.”

“Enjoy.”

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(photo: Fidel Amos)

While in Union Square in NYC one Spring day in 2009, I saw an elderly woman leaning on a wall small wall, facing the grass. For a second I thought she was merely staring off into space or resting, then I realized she was motioning with her hand…holding something. I looked in the direction that she was looking and saw a beat-up, raggedy, NYC squirrel standing on his hind paws in the grass about 30 feet from her, staring back at her. I prepared my Canon (which was slung around my shoulder) ready to shoot the interaction between them, trying to figure out a way to squeeze them both into the same frame. Suddenly the squirrel darted in her direction, quickly (yet politely) snatched the peanut from her by-then outstretched hand  and ran up into a tree.

By the time he go to her I had approximately 1/2 a second to pull the trigger…it’s a fraction off focus, but it came out rather nice.

A casual onlooker might think this was just a case of an elderly woman feeding a nut to a squirrel…as she might bread to pigeons on her stoop, or apples to a mounted officer’s horse. Judging by the condition of the squirrel, the familiar way in which it seemed to notice her and head in her direction and the simple fact that she was motioning for that particular one and none of the others that were within the same distance, I like to think that she had been going there for months and that the squirrel had been expecting her…
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(Wanna hang it on your wall? It’s available via my online gallery on Society6.com. Click the photo below to find out more…)