“ Juice” (See previous photo)
Mennonite children from church group who have traveled from Lancaster Pennsylvania to sing and conduct church service. Man on far right is a homeless man who tried to sneak into this photo.

A group of children has arrived to hold a religious service in the “Bowery Mission Chapel” for homeless men and women. The groups exited from their vehicle and were commandeered by Juice for this group portrait. They had no idea what was going on. Either did I, as I was down the block talking to some other men. Juice yelled down the block to summon me back to take a photo with him and, “his” group of posed kids. I hurried back up the block, to see this totally surreal scene. I took a few basic shots and then noticed the man in orange on the far right was sneaking into the picture. However, when Juice finally noticed this guy, sneaking in Juice got really mad and started screaming. He yelled at him, literally kicked him in the butt and made more threats. The only way to calm Juice back down was to show him pictures on my cameras LCD screen, that I did indeed have a photo of him with his “groupies” and at least one without the picture crasher included. I posted this version here, because it is so much more expressive of this strange, surreal event. I’m not quite sure of how I would characterize the kids and their overall reaction to this strange series of events. I think that the Mennonite kids are sweet and are completely innocent and clueless, as to the street events enfolding around them. They left and went inside to sing and pray with some of the men. What a wonderful thing for them to do, As for juice it took a while to get him pacified. I left soon afterwards. I wonder now of Juice were to see that I posted this version of the moment he would not be too happy with me or the picture crasher. God bless us all.

A link to NPR (National Public Radio) for a story about my work.
“All Things Considered”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4123582
You can hear an audio recording of the piece there as well.

You might want to look at my other logs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mashuga/ or
http://www.pbase.com/mashuga/mashuga