That moment when everything just clicks
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Riley Robinson Staff photographer
When I’m on a photo assignment, I always think about this advice I received as a student: A great image, at its most basic, is a real moment in great light. If you’re graced with a golden daybreak or dusk, the elements might come together quickly. More often, it takes sprinting, crouching, or climbing on chairs to get that ephemeral mix of angle, timing, light.
On this unusually warm September morning, the sky is on my side. I meet the runners under a peach-skin dawn in Prospect Park, Brooklyn’s big backyard. I’m here to photograph the running club of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and those runners are easy to spot in their DSA T-shirts. But the large camera swinging at my side is a dead giveaway, so they find me first.
Before the runners take off, one of them pulls out his phone and traces out their route. Since I wouldn’t be running alongside them with all my gear, I know I probably have just two chances to capture the action: when they set off, and when they complete their loop. As they finish their warmup and lean in to an easy pace, I sprint ahead, looking back to frame them against Grand Army Plaza. Click.
Then they pass, and I wait again. Specifically, I crouch in the bushes, as though I’m on some kind of stakeout, dodging an endless stream of spandex-clad early risers. I test my composition at different curves in the road, feeling vaguely like a part of the loathsome New York paparazzi. I keep an eye on my watch, tracking the time against the runners’ estimated pace. I watch and wait again. I train my camera’s focal point on the path and wait for the runners to reemerge. As I wait, the dawn burns off, and no other frames I shoot that day will surpass that first early morning glow.
Sometimes, though, the image doesn’t come together until the very last moments, right before I have to pack it all up.
A few weeks after the DSA run, I wait at a park in Queens with dozens of other journalists as New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani arrives at the last public event of his campaign. I stretch and squat to get a clear line of sight between a TV journalist’s ear and someone else’s elbow. It’s after dark, and my framing just isn’t working – until it is! Mr. Mamdani turns from the microphones after finishing his remarks. The air is peppered with flashes from other photographers. I hit the shutter just before he’s swarmed on the sidewalk leading to a waiting car. I scavenge for the good light until the end.
