Best Photo From Your Phone in 2022

[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lehrer Show's annual best photo sitting on your phone contest. Each year, as many of you know, we invite you to submit the best photo you took that year that is sitting on your phone. For 2022, we received over 900 submissions, and as we've done for the past few years, we got some bonafide experts to help us weed through them and pick out their favorite 50.

If you check our Twitter page, you'll see that we just tweeted out a link to a gallery of those 50 snaps for your viewing pleasure. We pick out three winners who get to come on the show for a few minutes to talk about the work. Let's start by bringing on the judges. They are Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a documentary photographer, and writer, and Sam Barzilay, Creative Director and co-founder of Photoville, a New York nonprofit that promotes a wider understanding of and increased access to photography for all. Laylah and Sam, we know you put in a lot of work to cull through these hundreds and hundreds of submissions by our listeners, so A million thank yous right off the bat and welcome to WNYC today.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: [unintelligible 00:01:25].

Sam Barzilay: Yes, thanks so much, Brian. It's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get to our winners, let's get to know a bit more about each of you and your impressions of how the body of work you saw from our listener's submission say something about the times we're living in perhaps. Sam, you, and your colleagues at Photoville have been generously donating your time to help judge this contest these last few years. You want to introduce Photoville to listeners who may not be familiar?

Sam Barzilay: Absolutely. Photoville, like you said, is a nonprofit based here in Brooklyn. We've been doing an annual photo festival, open to public outdoor for the last-- This is going to be our 12th year, came back this June 3rd for two weeks. We started in Brooklyn Bridge Park and we've expanded all over the city. The whole idea is to bring access of photography to more and more people that wouldn't normally enter a museum or a gallery. Just democratize that access to amazing storytelling.

Brian Lehrer: Laylah, help us get to know your artistic eye a bit. I see that you've got a photography book that's coming out later this week. Congratulations. Called We Are Present: 2020 In Portraits. Do you want to introduce people to the book and how it fits into the context of your work?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: Yes, definitely. My book, We Are Present: 2020 In Portraits is a year-long visual account of what I experienced, what I saw as a photojournalist and documentary photographer on assignment, but also a lot of the photographs in my book are of encounters of people that I spoke with, encountered, and just had conversations with them in 2020. All of the photographs in the book are portraits.

Brian Lehrer: Since you've been thinking about 2020, obviously, the pandemic year, the most intense of the pandemic years, thinking about 2020 as you've been putting that book together, can you reflect at all on what's different about the way 2022 looked visually as seen through our listener's submissions compared to what 2020 looked like through your lens?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: 2022 is, of course, an extension of 2020, so I think people are being a bit more expansive in what they turn their lens on. We have a lot of people, obviously, outside. We have a lot of public interactions, but I think people have gotten more personal. We see a lot of Tinder small family moments. We have a lot of people looking at nature, we have a lot of people expressing their sense of humor. There is a range and I think people were thinking deeply about life in general, just the everyday quotidian moments that we might have taken for granted.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get to our first winner. It's Kamel Brown. The simplest way to describe this photo is of a man wearing a Ketanji Brown Jackson shirt. Ketanji Brown Jackson, of course, the new Supreme Court justice. Sam, I'm going to invite you before we bring on Kamel to describe the photo for our listeners. Some can see this on our website. Most are just listening to us on the radio, so can I ask you to do the honors of describing this winning photo?

Sam Barzilay: Yes. Like you said, it's a man standing in front of a building, I believe it's in Harlem, and he's wearing a Ketanji Brown Jackson shirt. He's wearing a face mask, but not fully, that has the Pan-African colors. This has a very good planted feet stance. It's honestly a very capturing photo because it gives you so much context about the moment we're living in, in terms of the politics in terms of the pandemic, but also a lot of context, where it's at. This moment, for me, it brought up this idea of like this is where we are as a nation, this is a moment that needs to be noted in time.

Brian Lehrer: Kamel Brown joins us now. Kamel, welcome to the show. Congratulations on being one of our best photos sitting on your phone 2022 winners. Hi, there.

Kamel Brown: Thank you. Much appreciation.

Brian Lehrer: You want to tell us a little bit about the photo in your words. Who is this gentleman? How did he catch your eye in the first place to make you want to pull out your phone camera?

Kamel Brown: Well, it was in the month of April in 2022 when I was walking down Lenox Avenue. I was walking right past the Schomburg on my way to the subway on 135th Street, and in a distance, I saw the gentleman walking. He had a slow pace about him, but I could see the t-shirt, and it was something about the way he was walking that he had a certain pride about what he was wearing. I knew it was a moment that I wanted to freeze and share.

I complimented him on his shirt to see if I can engage him in a conversation and he spoke a few words. After he did, I asked him if I could take a picture of the shirt and he obliged. I took the initial picture of the shirt and then I took two more of the shirt and his face as well. Of course, in the conversation, he mentioned that he sells those shirts. I found that very interesting.

Brian Lehrer: You titled the photo, Harlem, not Ketanji Brown Jackson, not interesting man. You titled it Harlem, how come?

Kamel Brown: That's where I reside, and recently, I've been doing some research on the different things. Something that came across me was a speech that August Wilson gave back in 1996. He entitled it The Ground on which I Stand. For whatever reason, that has been ringing in my head for the last year or, so as I navigate the ground on which I stand, Harlem is one of the places, as well as Brooklyn, but Harlem is one of the places

where I navigate on a daily basis. That was the reason I chose that.

Brian Lehrer: Spoke Harlem to you. Beautiful, Sam, Laylah anything either of you want to say briefly to Kamel about why you chose his photo as one of the winning three?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: Yes, congratulations, Kamel. One thing I am interested in is--

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: You're welcome. I'm always interested in how people remember. I love this photograph because it's a picture within a picture, but then we have that ephemera aspect of the photograph which is the shirt, with a photograph of Ketanji Brown Jackson. We don't have the photograph accessible. The person in the photograph does have the shirt, and can also ink and can then share the story of who Ketanji Brown Jackson from the object of the shirt. That's what I loved about it, just all of the storytelling aspects in that photograph.

Brian Lehrer: Kamel, congratulations. Again, appreciate you and your photo, and thanks for giving us a few minutes on the radio.

Kamel Brown: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: On to our second winner, a photo from listener Geralyn Shukwit. It's a circle of people dressed mainly in black under a street lamp at night. I guess that's the most basic way to describe it, and in the middle of the circle, there's a man sitting on top of a bicycle that's twice as tall as what you would usually think of as the height of a bicycle, holding a poll with a foam fist attached to the end. Listeners, I'd say it looks like he's preparing to joust another biker, perhaps, outside the frame. A little googling suggests that this is Bike Kill, an event called Bike Kill, an annual Halloween-adjacent DIY festival thrown by anarchists in Brooklyn to celebrate as the organizers call them, Human-powered Joy Machines, Bikes. That's all very much in the vibe of this photo. Sam, from the technical perspective, what draws you to the shot?

Sam Barzilay: The fact that the photographer has been able to create order out of chaos. You can almost hear the sound, the crowd, the excitement, there's so much going on, and you get to have this moment in anticipation. You can see. There's a man on the left who's looking out, I'm guessing for the other, like you said, the other jouster. He seems so ready to launch him forward. There is this anticipation, this pricking silence brewing in this photograph, but you can almost hear the sound, the excitement in there, and that's what drew me to it.

Brian Lehrer: Geralyn, welcome to the show, and congratulations. This looks like quite an event, and I'm guessing this wasn't the only picture you took there. Tell us why you consider this the best photo sitting on your phone from 2022.

Geralyn Shukwit: Well, it's crazy. I did have my Canon around my neck when I was taking photos. Somebody had bumped into me because it was crazy crowded, and it teems the settings and it wouldn't let me take photos. I pulled out my iPhone, and I was like, "Thankful this photo happened," because it's-- I don't know. There was this moment of energy, and you have to run. As soon as they start pushing those bikes, you got to move because you're going to get hit by the bike. I think what's interesting is I was like-- I don't know. I was on your show a couple of years ago for a photograph, and it was--

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess I should disclose that since we judge these blind, we didn't know that you had previously won a Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone honor, a few years ago on the show, so congratulations for being a repeat winner. Go ahead.

Geralyn Shukwit: What I thought was interesting is you were talking about what 2020 versus 2022, and my previous image is a circle of people, but they're coming out of a hospital cheering on somebody after being released from COVID. Then this one, 2022 is like a completely different format, but also a circle of people cheering on. I feel like it's just where we've moved forward. We're back together, we're doing things, and we're ready to fight.

Brian Lehrer: You just said that you, I guess, you're enough of a photographer that you were wearing a Canon camera product adjustment around your neck, but when you saw this scene, you took out your phone. Why a phone shot instead of a professional camera shot?

Geralyn Shukwit: I wished I was using my other camera, but I got hit by somebody during the jousting, and my camera wouldn't take pictures anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, geez. Wow.

Geralyn Shukwit: I was like, "Crap. My phone." I just pulled out that phone because I couldn't believe I was staring there in that moment.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You paid your dues.

Geralyn Shukwit: I got very lucky.

Brian Lehrer: You paid a price to get the shot. Laylah, do you have any good stories from the field of a perfect shot you accidentally walked into?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: Oh, my goodness. I think all the time. I'm always searching for the photograph, searching for the picture. Man, I can't think of one now, but I think definitely during the demonstrations, there were moments where it was just like, "Man, if I kind of blinked my eye, I would have missed that small moment."

Brian Lehrer: Yes. There is a little secret, Geralyn, in this photo that takes a second before you see it. I don't want to spoil it, but I think you know what I'm talking about. Was that intentional or did you notice that afterwards? I guess spoiling as much as you're comfortable with, what is that subtle addition bring to the photo?

Geralyn Shukwit: I don't know what you're speaking of. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Well, I'm just going to let that sit there for the moment.

Geralyn Shukwit: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, anything else you want to tell Geralyn since Laylah just talked last or ask about her photo while we have her on the line with us?

Sam Barzilay: I'm just going to say, there's a saying that the best camera is the one you have on you at the moment. In some ways, a lot of us have complained sometimes, "Oh, the phone won't take many photos. We don't look at them," but the fact that when all else fails, you pull your phone and you can still take a photo like this and you can capture that moment. Yes, I love this image just that energy. It's a blink and you miss it moment.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: The composition wise like the layers and it draws you in like you are thinking about what's out of the frame and that's very intriguing to me.

Brian Lehrer: Geralyn, thank you so much for joining us and submitting your best photo. Congratulations. We're going to go to our third winner for the 2022 Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone photo contest, and that's John Huntington. His photo is not of people as the first two were but of a lightning strike, arcing out from behind a dark cloud, and then striking what looks like the water in New York Bay, just north of the Verrazano Bridge. Sam, tell us why the judges picked this photo as one of the best submissions.

Sam Barzilay: I have seen, Brian, so many photos of lightning, so many photos of storms, and this is such an improbable shot. When I first looked at that, I thought, he must have staked out, put his camera down, and waited for hours in case this happens. Reading his description, as I'm sure John does, this happened in an instant. He saw it coming, he put his camera, within a minute, he had this photo, and it's just so perfect. It's not often you see lightning strikes so cleanly, so perfectly centered. This is such an improbable image.

Brian Lehrer: We got John joining us now to talk about his lightning strike photo. John, welcome.

John Huntington: Oh, thank you. It's a real honor to be on your show.

Brian Lehrer: Now, the odds of getting struck by lightning are famously small. I imagine it's just as hard to capture a lightning strike on film, and that much harder to have it turned out as good-looking as this one. How did you do it?

John Huntington: Well, I've been chasing storms for almost 15 years. I go out every spring and out in the plains. Like this year, I spent a lot of time in Nebraska. I shoot lightning everywhere that I can because I love shooting it. This is actually from my terrace in Staten Island. I just moved out here after 20 years in Brooklyn. This one, if you watch storms long enough, you get a sense of where you can watch the lightning and go, "Okay, it's over here. Now, it's moving in this direction."

Then after that, it's a lot of luck. I do have a trigger. This is not on my phone. This is my real nighttime camera, but I have a trigger that shoots it. I was watching the storm progress, and I'm like, "Okay, it's heading over in this direction." Then with lighting, I always frame up the shot I would like to see, and then sometimes you get lucky. There's certainly some editing I did, but it was almost dead center in the frame, and it just came out amazing. Just watching this stuff is always incredible. I actually had a bunch of guests on my barbecue that saw this lightning bolt as well live.

Brian Lehrer: As somebody who likes to chase storms with your camera, do you develop an instinct for timing, or do you just go when you know you're in the middle of a lightning storm, for example, you go click, click, click, and eventually, you're going to get it.

John Huntington: If it's a really active storm, I often would just shoot manually, just hold the shutter open until something good happens, and then release it. This year in New York for storm chasers, there's a small group of us that are all friends that are all crazy about this stuff so we're watching every storm that comes through when we're available. There was really not very many photogenic storms this year in the city, so this one wasn't one that was dropping out a boat every second because sometimes you see those, especially on a big tornado warning storm in the plains or something. We can see these from 100 miles away. It's just like boat, boat, boat, and you can frame it up and go.

This one was pretty sparse so there was a lot of luck involved, but I was anticipating the direction the storm was heading. You can see which is the most electrically active part of the storm. I love seeing this one because it hit right the water you can see where it landed because a lot of times it's off in the distance or something.

Brian Lehrer: John Huntington, thank you very much, and congratulations. We're going to go back to photographer Geralyn Shukwit for just a second to clarify that thing that I brought up that was supposed to be a surprise, I thought. What I was referring to is the person looks like a person hanging on the electrical pole shrouded in darkness, and it looked to me like something that you're not even supposed to see at first and then if you look long enough, then, "Oh, look, a human being on a pole."

Geralyn Shukwit: I didn't even notice it.

Brian Lehrer: It's just like a hand hanging on to the pole. Anyway, okay, just another detail about subtlety of your shot. Thank you, again. Those are our winners. Sam and Laylah, before we let you both go, are there any photos besides those three winners that you want to shout out for people to find in the gallery online? Sam you first.

Sam Barzilay: Sure. I will pick actually quite of an unexpected one. There was an image of a man what appears to be his shower, he's wearing a headband that has two hotdogs sticking out of it dangling. At first sight, it's really silly, but then it made me think so much of that stack craziness we all had in 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, where we were stuck at home and we didn't-- There is that primal fear of what is going to happen, but you also didn't know what to do with yourself.

It felt like that sort of like slowly a little bit losing your mind. Reading about this, it's part of a series we started during the pandemic of photographing stuff every day doing something. For me, the folk, that feeling I was having in the beginning of the pandemic of like, "Where does this go?" Look for it, and email the photo to them.

Brian Lehrer: Laylah, how about you? Any quick honorable mentions you want to shout out?

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: Yes, sure. I really enjoyed the photograph by Diane Mevorach and it's up a container with some chalk and some scrabble pieces. It says happy new ear, but the Y is missing, but we all get it. It evokes the sense of just like the show must go on. You what I mean? Just kind of a typical new New Yorker, like, here we go. We don't have all the pieces, we're going to make it happen anyway.

Sam Barzilay: I love that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. There we leave it, beautifully so, with this year's edition of the Best Photo on Your Phone, the 2022 edition. Our guest judges this year, once again, we're Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a documentary photographer and writer, and look for her new book, which is being released on Friday, I'm told, We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits, and Sam Barzilay, Creative Director and co-founder of Photoville. What's the Photoville website if people want to go see other stuff there?

Sam Barzilay: It's photoville.nyc, and we're coming back in June 3rd in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Brian, you are welcome to join us.

Brian Lehrer: In Brooklyn Bridge Park. Thank you so much for culling over 900 submissions down to 70, and then 50, and then 7, and then finally 3. There were so many great submissions. I'm sure it was a difficult job and certainly time-consuming. Listeners, check out the winners and other submissions at wnyc.org/bestphoto2022, wnyc.org/bestphoto2022 and have some fun looking at all those shots. Thanks to everybody listening who submitted.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn: Thank you.

Sam Barzilay: Thank you so much, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.