santa con

Red is always a hard color to photograph, especially with humans wearing it. The color spills over to their skin tone and its hard to remove it without making the subjects look pale or have a green cast, so I often ask my subjects not to wear it. I don’t have so much control when I am doing street photography and I don’t really care as my intention is to shoot high contrast and turn it into a black and white image. Today’s post is an exception. I wanted to post something in the spirit of the season. So color it is, as nothing says holidays like a shot with red santa hats with foggy glass…HO HO HO. This image was shot 3 years ago when I could still get my son to believe in Santa. I schlepped him and a friend into NYC on the snowiest day of the year with the promise that Santa was real and he needed to tell him what he wanted..otherwise he just wouldn’t get anything on Christmas ( which BTW is also his birthday) . It seemed it was also Santa Con all over the city that day and seeing everyone dressed up in Santa costumes just pushed my kid in the direction of giving up the fantasy of “Real Santa” for good. Not sure is if was the goofy multiple Macy’s Santa’s, or the pedestrians all dressed up in various Santa outfits or the lone homeless man with a fake beard, red stocking cap, smoking the cigarette or that he was just that age when you realize it’s all not real,