The Photos I Almost Missed

A shot list is always a good starting point, but it’s never something to carve in stone.

New York was proof of that.

Before almost every trip, I do a little homework and research. I look for things that intrigue me, then scout locations virtually, mostly with Google Street View, studying compositions online to figure out where a shot was likely taken from, where there might be more unique angles, and how to get from one location to the next once I’m actually there.

This time, the plan was my “Look Up!” series, an ongoing project built entirely around craning my neck or laying on the ground and photographing whatever architecture happens to be looming overhead. Typically that means domed ceilings and heavily symmetrical compositions. Getting the symmetry exactly right is usually the goal, one of the aesthetics I’m always chasing. It’s also a perspective most people rarely take the time to actually look up and take in. New York felt like a slam dunk for it. I had a mental list before we even boarded the plane: the Oculus, the World Trade Center transit hub with its white ribbed ceiling that looks like the bones of some enormous whale, the Vessel's spiraling staircase, and glass towers reflecting glass towers, because Manhattan is basically a hall of mirrors if you tilt your camera right.

That same habit of research applies close to home too. I just don’t always remember to use it. A couple of weeks earlier, Kris and I had spent a full day around Minneapolis, from downtown to the Sculpture Garden, trying to find local material worth shooting. My art fair booth is notoriously short on local work, so for once we treated our own city like a destination instead of just the place we live. My Look Up series is always somewhere on my radar no matter where I am, that antenna never really goes down, and a little research turned up something I never expected: an amazing lookup shot waiting inside the Minneapolis City Hall building, a building I’d driven past dozens of times without ever knowing it was there.

This particular morning, New York already had other plans for me.

It was one of those perfect, sharp, sunny days, the kind where shadows get long and crisp instead of soft and forgettable. Early that morning, as we were walking around, I spotted my first couple of fire escapes, enough to plant a kernel in the back of my mind, and from there I just became more and more aware of them as the day went on.

We rode the subway once, early in the day, enough to remind us just how much you miss above ground when you’re down below. The New York subway isn’t a novelty for us, we’ve ridden it plenty of times over the years, along with subways in cities like London and Paris. The underground can be its own kind of wonderland for photography, all that atmosphere and grit. Just not on a day like this one.

With the sun casting those crisp shadows, staying below ground felt like turning my back on something I’d only just discovered I wanted to photograph. So we came back up and stayed above ground, walking the rest of the day, chasing more of what we’d already glimpsed that morning. We started down by the Oculus at the old World Trade Center and worked our way all the way up to Times Square, weaving through the High Line along the way.

And that’s when the fire escapes really found me.

They were everywhere. Zigzagging down the sides of buildings, throwing these beautiful angular shadows across brick and stone depending on where the sun sat in the sky. I hadn’t planned for them. They weren’t on my list. But once that first glimpse caught my eye, I couldn’t stop noticing them, and I started photographing one after another after another.

It clicked for me almost immediately why these felt so familiar. There’s a fire escape on a building near where I work, one I’ve driven past numerous times and always had the best intentions of photographing. The problem is, I never had a camera with me, which, for a photographer, is its own small failure. That building had been nagging at me for months, and here was New York, more than a thousand miles away, finally handing me exactly the kind of light and the fire escapes I’d been meaning to shoot all along, unknowingly reminding me I still owed myself that photo.

Here’s the part that actually stuck with me, more than any single shot from the trip.

I haven’t sorted through most of the photos yet, that’ll take a while, but while we were still in New York I was pulling shots off the camera wirelessly onto my phone as we went, and a handful of those fire escapes were immediate standouts even on a small screen.

Back home is where it really got interesting. A few days ago I swung by the Elliot Park Hotel, where my work has been on display for a while now, to drop off a new print. On the drive home through downtown Minneapolis, I couldn’t help but notice fire escapes everywhere.

They were always there. I just didn’t realize I was drawn to them until a trip to New York made me really see the potential in photographing them.

That’s the part I keep turning over. It’s not really about fire escapes. It’s about the fact that my camera almost never comes out unless we’re traveling somewhere, which, if I’m honest, is a real failing on my part as a photographer. I’ve always defined myself as a travel photographer, but maybe that label is part of the problem, if the camera only comes out once I’ve left home, I’m limiting myself before I even start. That day a couple of weeks ago in Minneapolis felt good precisely because it broke that pattern, and it’s something I need to do a lot more of.

Going Forward

I’ve got enough fire escape shots now to call it the start of a small series, one I plan to keep building every time we travel somewhere new. But the bigger shift is closer to home. I’m trying to actually shoot where I live now, not just where I visit, and to trust that the same eye that finds something worth photographing in Manhattan can find something worth photographing three blocks from my house.

I went to New York with a list. I came home with a different question.

What’s something near you that you’d notice in a heartbeat as a tourist, but walk right past every day at home?