This section has looked at developing confidence, this helped me get used to taking pictures of people out and about in 'people unaware'. What helped increase confidence was taking pictures in areas where people with a camera was a regular sight, these tended to be the tourist areas, comfort levels were fine, less so in other areas, especially when someone looks at the camera. When I had a look of suspicion I pointed the camera in another direction so it looked like I wasn't trying to get anyone in the frame.
Capturing the moment
This section required the development of 'powers of observation and anticipation' of what may be coming next, on the whole this exercise taught me the need for patience and the need for fast reflexes and shutter speed, I also needed to shoot freely as the 'moment' may have ended up being one not anticipated. Henri Cartier Bresson's 'man jumping over the puddle' is an example of his 'decisive moment' and that observation, time and patients pay off.
Man jumping over the puddle
Train Your Gaze, Roswell Angier p33.
'With human subjects, the moment is always decisive in matters of framing. The photographer arranges the information found in the camera's viewfinder, often intuitively and extremely quickly, in a way that seems appropriate to his sense of the quality of the instant. Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the term "the decisive moment."
Standing back
I especially enjoyed this exercise allowed me to be a guilt free 'nosey parker', I used a 75 - 300mm lens in order to take photo's of people from a distance. Whist the lens made it very easy to zoom in to people, the compression made it difficult to scan around the scene without having to look away from the camera, make it quite disorientating to scan solely through the lens. The selection of the subject was important as less inclusion of subject matter in the frame required more precision as there is less to crop out post processing. Using the telephoto lens allowed me to take more intimate images in a less obvious and intrusive way, taking candid images much easier and very comfortably as a result. The location and position chosen to take these photo's was important as it was easy for people to walk into the frame and with the compression of the lens this was hard to anticipate easily.
Exercise - wide angle
What surprised me about this exercise was the effect of using a wide angle close to people had. It reminded me of some of the work of William Klein, his work makes the view feel right in the surroundings of the frame. I was inspired to re-create the same kind of images. The wide angle really does place the viewer right in the scene. To avoid the discomfort of bringing the camera to my eye right in front of people, I held the camera on the neck strap at roughly waist level and took images by pointing roughly in the direction I wanted, sometimes tilting upwards, this was easier than I imaged once I'd got use to the shooting position of the camera. I found it very comfortable to take images as know one had any idea I was taking photo's. I was pleased with the results, I preferred them converted to black and white, which is how street photography should look to me, it shows a gritty edge whilst also showing the texture and geometry sometimes lost or distracted by colour.
Example of William Klein's work
Exercise - standard focal length
I was interested to notice the effect on the viewer of images taken at 50mm, whilst this gives a 'normal' view, one cant help but have a good look around the image to see what's going on, as nothing in particular is zoomed in on, or there are no graphic changes such as with wide angle, but a simple, ordinary view actually forces the viewer to look and take in the scene. From a photography point of view I feel that there is more observational skills required for this kind of image as an interesting scene or element is essential to make the image 'work', street photography is made to look easy by th
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