People on Benches

Put a human in the frame

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is what Sundays look like at love, journalism — a dispatch from the notebook, unfiltered, from whatever year I happened to be living in.

Today’s edition begins another new series from my photo archives — decades of pics from the digital and analog eras.

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Long ago, after some of my first Kodak disk prints came back looking blah, my dad offered advice: Put a human in the frame.

I was no aspiring landscape photographer. But he was right to suggest getting real live people into my snapshots.

Little did he know he’s be inspiring decades of images from around the world that I’m sharing now via love, journalism.

Granada, Spain: January 2004.

Welcome to the People on Benches series. Another accidental archive. Like Power Lines, this one is connected by something I noticed after the fact about the same thing running through the frame.

Paris: April 2007.

I’ve found these are some of the best pictures in my collection. They capture romance.

Chillon Castle, Switzerland, March 2023.

They capture humans and their animals.

Vancouver Island, British Columbia: August 2015.

OK, no people on this bench but I love the suggestion nonetheless.

Vancouver Island: August 2015.

And here’s your author, captured during a moment of respite.

Send me yours - people on benches, or whatever things keep sneaking into your photos.

And now, a special word for our paying subscribers.