The Story Behind “Nomad”

This photo, entitled “Nomad,” is one of the first photos I took when I began exploring smartphone photography back in 2013/2014.

I was working in downtown Baltimore at the time and I took a lunchtime walk down to the iconic Inner Harbor. Growing up in Baltimore, the Inner Harbor is one of those local treasures that it’s easy to take for granted, but if you’ve never been, you really need to add it to your bucket list. There are so many things to see in just a quick walk around the harbor - the U.S.S. Constellation, Harbor Place, the Maryland Science Center, the Top of the World observation deck at the World Trade Center, the Power Plant, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It was a very chilly February day so I’m not sure why I decided to go for a walk. In fact, shortly after I shot this photo on my iPhone 5, the phone shut itself down due to the extreme cold.

As I was walking in between the pavilions at Harbor Place, I saw a homeless man sitting on a bench. He appeared to be sleeping and trying to keep warm out in the cold conditions. So, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of a busy work day lunch break downtown, here was a homeless person sleeping on a bench.

If you look closely enough, you’ll see a couple of children in the background of the photo. It struck me that these children were simply enjoying their day, unaware of the homeless man sleeping on the bench out in the cold on the other side of the bushes...and probably unaware that homelessness was even a “thing.”

It seemed to be a fascinating juxtaposition...young children, full of happiness and innocence, whose lives were just starting out, compared to this homeless man. What decisions or twists of fate had led to his current situation? Or maybe he simply chose not to participate in the rat race and opted for a simpler life.

After snapping this photo, I examined it for a few days trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

At first, I was going to leave the image in full color - as seen below.

Then, I considered making the image look more “artsy” and more like “street photography” by giving it a more black & white look.

Finally, I decided to add a “color splash” effect to the photo, so that the “nomad” would be in color and everything else in the scene would be in black & white.

This sorts of turns the world as we know it on its head. Usually, everything else going on in the world is considered important and homeless people are deemed insignificant or considered an afterthought - so I wanted to reverse that.

I used the Aviary app and Snapseed app to create the “color splash” effect by applying, then masking, the black & white filter.

This is when I first began to realize that one could create beautiful art, and at the same time offer a commentary on society, via the magical little devices we keep in our pockets. Smartphone photography has taken dramatic leaps forward over the past few years - and that trend will certainly continue. It’s a bit ironic that this homeless person - presumably without many belongings of his own - was sleeping on a bench while I used a $600 smartphone to snap his photo.

I’ve taken countless photos since taking this shot that seemingly started it all - but “Nomad” remains one of my personal favorites to this very day.