Michelle Schwartz

I spent the summer of 2007 on a road trip from New York to Vancouver with my friend, Gen. I had borrowed a telephoto lens and was excited to try it out. While we stopped for a few days in Jersey, I discovered the joys of using it to capture candid images of people.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

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Toronto is a city of ravines and valleys. Often, I will be walking along a major street and notice a dirt path obscured by some bushes. I’ll walk down a hill and find myself standing on a beautiful nature trail in the woods, as if five seconds earlier I wasn’t standing in the middle of a major downtown area. These photos were taken when I discovered the Don Valley Brick Works for the first time. For this set, I was really focused on texture.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

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One day, while Stark and I were walking back to the apartment, we cut through an alley that is the dumping ground for all the discarded furniture, old bathroom fixtures, and rejected home furnishings from the many surrounding bulidings. Placed right on top of a pile of broken dresser drawers was a pair of old electric typewriters. They were missing the plastic shells that should have been covering their inner workings, and Stark and I found ourselves engrossed by the tiny gears and springs. We took some photos and then absonded with the golf ball type elements.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

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Last year I found a group on Flickr that was called 365 Days. The idea was to sign up and post a self-portrait of yourself to the group every day for a year. I tried to complete the challenge, but I only made it a few months before I started feeling guilty of rampant narcissism. I also ran out of ideas for photos. After self-portraits at the dentist, on the train, at work, and watching TV, I decided to move on. These are a few examples from the project.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

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A selection of photographs I took in the Annex, Toronto. A friend was working on a proposal for a movie about the gentrification of the neighborhood. He wanted to focus on an old church that was being converted into condominiums and asked me to accompany him on a walk around the neighborhood, taking photos to use as visual aids in his presentation. These are some of the photos I took of the condo showroom inside the church. All photos were shot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT.

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A selection of photographs I’ve taken in Europe. I studied abroad in Florence during a semester of my Junior year at NYU. After the semester was over, I spent an additional three weeks backpacking across Eastern Europe with a friend. It was during this time in Europe that I first became passionate about photography. My parents had gotten me a 4 megapixel point and shoot that came with a copy of Photoshop Elements, and I ended up shooting thousands of photos. Now I wish I had been in Europe with a better camera and more experience, but there are still some photos from the trip that I love to this day.

All photos shot with a Konica Digital Revio KD-400Z.

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A selection of photographs I’ve taken at Coney Island, Brooklyn. Coney Island is one of my favorite places in the world. I have so many memories from there - working at the New York Aquarium, riding the Cyclone, trying to grab a ring from the carousel playing “Shoot the Freak.” Ever since I heard the redevelopment plans for the amusement area, I’ve tried to make as many trips there to document my memories of Coney Island as well as I can.

All photos shot with a Digital Rebel XT and edited in Photoshop. “Sideshows by the Seashore” and “Eric and MIchael” were captured using a LensBaby 2.0.

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This is a selection of photographs I’ve taken in Manhattan. I took “Union Square at Night” as part of an introductory photography class at Cooper Union. It was the first photo of mine that I ever wanted to get framed. I shot “Chumley’s Bar” in the afternoon, while the bar was deserted. A friend had a plan to take photos in old bars across New York, and I joined her on this particular expedition. The “NYPD Officer” was taken across the street from Carnegie Hall. There was a fire in one of the buildings and everyone was standing around, looking up, trying to see what was going on.

All photos shot with a Digital Rebel XT. The first two were long exposure shots, and the third was shot using a Lensbaby 2.0.

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