My wife Christine recently asked me, “Don’t you get bored with Coney Island, going back there all the time?” Fair question. And the answer is, I don’t. Sometimes I do get a little tired of it, which is different than being bored, I think. It can get pretty repetitive and even physically tiring walking up and down the boardwalk for two or three hours waiting for an image to present itself on one of these benches. After all, I can’t control who sits or does not sit there, or who might sit alongside whom, creating a compelling image. I can’t make something happen. I can only hope to witness it, and freeze-frame it. So in that sense, it can feel like wasting a whole lot of time... some days literally for nothing. And there’s the repetitive subway rides, the schlep across Stilwell Avenue... 

But there’s always the chance of stumbling onto a great moment, and there’s always the opportunity to experiment and try something new. When the benches are empty or just not that interesting, it pushes me to look somewhere else, to go deeper. So there’s always growth. For me, relatively new to this whole photography thing, that’s always there for the taking. The experimenting, the learning, the failing, the growth. That’s never boring.