Street Photography. Amateur street photography: a beginner's guide | Art and design. Picture the scene: you're out on the sidewalk – maybe shopping, chatting or just daydreaming. Suddenly, you notice a shifty-looking bloke pointing a camera at you. What's your reaction? Discomfort, embarrassment – anger? Before you lose your temper, spare a thought for the person behind the camera. As a practitioner of the increasingly popular art of amateur street photography, I can assure you there's every chance the photographer is feeling as embarrassed as you, and is just as uncomfortable with the idea of invading your privacy.
So why do we do it? We talk about "taking" a photograph, but the process is nowhere near as one-sided as the word implies. City streets are a great place to take photographs. For those who yearn to make the leap from admiring other people's photographs to photographing other people, street photography is the obvious starting point. Ironically, street photographers expose themselves to even more scrutiny than their subjects. Hostility Resentment Act naturally. Portraits of Strangers | Shooting Strangers in Orchard Road - StumbleUpon. When I’m out on the streets, I often encounter faces that make me look twice; faces that stand out in the crowd without trying; faces that are out of the ordinary.
They range from the exquisitely beautiful to the strangely wonderful. I started to approach these strangers for permission to take a photo of them. Some said no, but most said yes. After taking their portrait, I’d say ‘thank you’ and walk on along. Read more about the project here. To view all the other photos, please visit my facebook set here or my flickr set here. I saw her sitting on the stairs outside of a mall, talking with her friend. A year and a half later, I got to connect with her through Facebook.
I saw her from afar, walking briskly, standing out of the crowd with her short blonde hair and tall stature. She was walking with her boyfriend. He was sitting outside the mall, wearing dark sunglasses. It was one of those days where I was walking around for about 3 hours and couldn’t find a good face to photograph. A Cowards Guide to Street Photography. A Guest post by Angie Muldowney. I love the poignancy of street photography; the way it can portray the world in an ironic, tragic, educational or funny way – often all at the same time! I would love to have the confidence to point my lens directly at someone and shoot, even from a distance – more often than not though I just don’t have the ‘hutzpah’.
Whilst I may be cowardly in this respect, I am determined, so here are some ways I have found to make the whole process a little less daunting for me and less intimidating for my subjects. This isn’t a technical guide (there are already some great ones on this very site); rather, I am suggesting some sensitive and less confrontational ways of getting candid street shots. 1. Go to a place where everyone has a camera 2. Sometimes you can see the perfect shot in your minds eye, in which case simply set up your camera with the focus in the right place and wait for somebody to walk into the frame. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 10 Things Not To Do As a Street Photographer. (Above image “Untitled” by Christos Kapatos) I just finished reading “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, where he discusses many misconceptions and fallacies that we face as humans.
He talks from a scientific-philosophical viewpoint, and has many fascinating insights. One of them was about knowledge—and that it isn’t necessarily additive—rather something subtractive. For example, a good stock-broker won’t tell you what to do, but rather what not to do. Therefore for this blog post I will share some of my insights and experiences in street photography in terms of what not to do. 1.Dont shoot standing up One of the things I always advise people against when shooting street photography is shooting standing up. Of course this depends on the situation. 2.Dont shoot street performers or the homeless Shooting street performers or the homeless are easy targets.
Street performers have their photo taken all the time, and aren’t challenging to take photos of. 5.Don’t waste time focusing.