For twenty-five years I drove the same route to and from work, a 12.4 mile distance that often took about 45 minutes but at times could take over two hours. The route included surface streets, turnpikes and interstates and traveled through several different neighborhoods. The neighborhood driving patterns varied depending upon the people and culture of the neighborhood. South Florida is a pocket community, with different groups of people collecting into their own little pockets. I traveled through a senior citizen neighborhood, as well as Cuban, Haitian, Jewish, African American and many more. Each driving pattern in the area was different based on the culture of the area.
Learning to adjust my driving pattern as I entered a specific neighborhood was entertaining at first. But after awhile, I became very bored. I have always enjoyed photography, so I started carrying a small digital camera. It would fit in the palm of my hand and had a decent optical zoom. So, on the way to work and on the way home, I would photograph things along the way that captured my eye. Often it would be human faces amidst the chrome, glass and metal of the traffic snaking its way slowly down the highway. Sometimes it was interesting debris.
Below is just a very small sample of what I captured over the years. I am working on collecting all of my photographs into a large project. Not sure if it will be a giant canvas with all the images, or a large photo book, or something else.
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And to answer all of my work colleague’s question, no, I never got into an accident while photographing things out my window. Usually because in most cases I was in standing still traffic!
I even wrote a poem about this:
Traffic faces
By Dart Humeston
traffic faces keep me
in the races
keeps me driving to work
every day
I-95 and other highways
same old same old
day after day
but snippets of faces caught
amiss the chrome, steel and rubber
sparkle my drive, lighten the miles
traffic faces
keeps me going
Dart
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What a cleaver idea. I never thought of doing this…it’s so frustrating being stuck in traffic for long periods. Faces are very interesting…wonder what they’re thinking?