Remembering Boots – Water Street
I was out shooting last week. as i walked up the street after grabbing a coffee, i kept noticing barely legible grafitti scrawled on the windows all along waterstreet.
“RIP Boots, Love you bro” read some of them.
i decided to see if i could make a picture of it. so i stopped at one of the scrawlings and looked at it. I tried dragging the shutter as someone walked by it, tried freezing someone walking by it. tried it from the left, and from the right. nothing seemed to work. i stood there staring at it.
There was an older guy standing at the bus stop about 10 feet away from me. he seemed amused with my ape like problem solving abilities.
“Did you know boots too?” he shouted toward me.
I didn’t. i just thought that if someone went through the trouble to break out their paint markers to honour him/her it might be something worth capturing. The gentleman’s name was Leo.
“Boots was a cool little dude – a bit of a ticket, but stayed away from too much trouble, never touched the hard drugs” offered Leo. “he drowned last year. he was only a young one. On a day like today, its nice to see that someone else is thinking of him”
I asked to take his photo in front of the makeshift memorial, and after a few snaps his bus came, and leo departed.
I had found my shot. And a much more meaningful one than i could have ever imagined.