Shooting from the hip

[ebino]

A friend photographer once said, shooting from the hip is taking something from somebody without looking at them and without saying thanks -its just rude.

What are you thoughts about shooting from the hip?

 

[wilonstott]

Don't know about the rudeness--I take pictures of people in the street (while looking at them, mind you) and do not thank them.

Always gets more complicated if you approach them after the fact--well, in actuality I don't do that, so I don't really know--I've always simply assumed this to be the case.

I don't "shoot from the hip" (which I define as not looking through the viewfinder when taking a photo, and hence not composing the shot) because there's too much chance involved.

I feel like it's not completely mine, or something along that order. It always seemed accidental in nature; especially if the result was pleasing.

I don't hate it. I'm sure there are some good shots that have come from this technique.
I just don't do it.

TL;DR
I don't do it, but I don't think it's rude--maybe just kind of amateurish. It works for some people though, and that's cool.

 

[MCTuomey]

If I shoot from the hip, it's rare and only when I can't manage to get the finder to my eye, or vice versa. I find it very difficult to get useable shots this way, even with agressive cropping. I don't like it but only because it doesn't seem to work well, not because it might be rude or unskilled to use the technique.

 

[sevo]

Shooting from the hip is just as valid as anything else, and sometimes can't be avoided if you want a non-camera conscious shot and can't distract or direct your subjects away from the camera. Arguably it is hard to master, and no less prone to deliver clichéd images than a formal portrait, but that is no moral but a practical issue. There is no morally superior or inferior technique.

 

[jsrockit]

I do it sometimes... if a person doesn't want you to take there photo, it doesn't matter if it's from the hip, from behind your back, or if you are looking right at them. Unless you ask them prior to making the photo, you never know if someone is ok with you photographing them and how you do it is not really valid.

 

[Arjay]

Shooting from the hip is just as valid as anything else, and sometimes can't be avoided if you want a non-camera conscious shot and can't distract or direct your subjects away from the camera. Arguably it is hard to master, and no less prone to deliver clichéd images than a formal portrait, but that is no moral but a practical issue. There is no morally superior or inferior technique.

+1

I very often use this technique because I want my pictures to be like memories, and memories are distinctly differnt from (typically posed) photographs. I feel that whenever people know that I take pictures of them, they will behave and look differently. This only changes when I am together with my subjects for an extended period of time, during which they will lose the notion that someone is specifically looking at them.

Shooting from the hip does take a fair amount of practice, and I actually don't hold the camera literally near my hip because the distance between my eye and the camera's position in that case would be too large to ensure good eye-to-hand (camera) coordination. Please see this thread (especially message #5) for a more technically-minded discussion of that topic.

Some people feel that shooting from the hip in a way is like visual robbery. In the other thread, I have taken quite a lot of flak in that regard. However, I don't think I'm doing anything wrong if I work according to a set of self-imposed rules:

• No exploitive pictures like picturing people in trouble (poverty, psychical illness, or quite simply embarassing situations)
• I try to refrain from acting against culturally related rules (some religions are forbidding pictures of its followers). In that case, I try to take photographs only after asking if it is ok with those people.
• I try to stay away from situations in which someone might feel I was taking a picture of him as he engages in something illegal. That's sheer self-protection; I'm not the police after all.

I am aware that there are borderline cases, in which I will have to use my own judgement and common sense.

 

[ferider]

What are you thoughts about shooting from the hip?

It generates boring photos. I have yet to see a good hip shot.

 

[dovi]

Mostly done without looking at viewfinder--"intuitively"

The proof of the pudding is in the eating... (I love this book)

http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com/2007/12/inner-city-joseph-mills.html

 

[Arjay]

It generates boring photos. I have yet to see a good hip shot.

Hm - but that only happens if you shoot in such a way that you can't imagine what the camera is seeing. Then, of course, the pictures will be rather random.

With a little technique and practice, you should be able to change that situation, and still have reasonable control over what you shoot when 'shooting from the hip'.

 

[Sparrow]

What Roland said, the photographic equivalent of Pollock and abstract expressionism

 

[ebino]

I have flirted with hip shots (not looking through the VF) for a long time, but it was mostly due to the camera i was using, a Canon G10. the VF was useless and the LCD not that easy to see in bright sunlight, not to mention framing with an LCD has never been comfortable to me.

So, I begun to shoot from the hip, and it just got crazy. i was very impressed with the pictures, but i felt uneasy that it was not me who framed that way, and what was my part in that particular picture... Then the other conundrum was, am I really a photographer or someone using a camera to collect random images with no control on the framing? What skill I'm learning, or using?

By doing hip shots, I was not learning anything, I was psychologically uncomfortable and finally i felt no connection with the subject(s). I also sort of agree with what my friend said. When you point the camera at someone you acknowledge what you're doing and once you took the picture you can smile, as if saying thank you. Not to mention when you point the camera some interaction happens and sometimes people let you photograph them while they pretend not to be aware of you. There is connection.

A hip shot to me is just playing the probability game and taking advantage of the camera and its ability to record everything in its focal range... Its the camera that is in charge and the photographer exerts minimal control.

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

I do it a lot. you learn to compose a shot without having your camera at eye-level at some point, although, naturally, it doesn't always work out (TTV shots do not always work either 😉 ).
I don't feel bad for it, why should I. it often allows me to be aware of other things happening around me and act accordingly. it can also 'ease up' your way to perceive and then present things, and enables you to react on things you couldn't have captured otherwise.

here's a few examples:

 

[dovi]

a hip shot I like

a hip shot I like

Sometimes it's OK not to have total control...

 

[andredossantos]

If I quickly compose a shot but then move the viewfinder off my eye a couple inches down when I click the shutter is that considered a "hip shot"?

If I use the live view in the back LCD of a digital camera and scale focus but dont bring the camera to my eye is that a "hip shot"?

Sometimes I dont bring the camera to my eye because I dont want the subject to know a photo is being taken. If you are going for the not being noticed approach then how does it matter if its a "hip shot" of if you are simply stealthy and bring the camera to your eye?

I also dont agree that it is impossible to know what will appear in the frame. Once one is "used to" certain focal lengths its actually not to hard to frame even without looking into the viewfinder, especially if you have the camera held up around your face when you click.

Edit: I forgot to ask about TLRs. People never realize your shooting when you use a TLR. Is that morally unacceptable as well under the same sort of code?

 

[ebino]

If I quickly compose a shot but then move it off my eye a couple inches down when I click the shutter is that considered a "hip shot"?

If I use the live view in the back LCD of a digital camera and scale focus but dont bring the camera to my eye is that a "hip shot"?

Sometimes I dont bring the camera to my eye because I dont want the subject to know a photo is being taken. If you are going for the not being noticed approach then how does it matter if its a "hip shot" of if you are simply stealthy and bring the camera to your eye?

That is your call. Its you and your work, what sort of pictures gives you satisfaction, artistic pride and shows your "eye" and what it saw and captured.

 

[Chris101]

Moral/schmoral - if you are going to steal someone's soul, it does not matter if you look through the hole or not. I "shoot from the hip" all the time, and like the pix.

 

[JoeV]

I like randomness in photography, although I agree that the "hit rate" of good shots is less with this method. Digital cameras also enable the cost of this practice to be much lower.

I don't believe that hip shots are entirely random; you wouldn't expect to get a shot of an elephant wearing pink panties when pointing the camera in the general direction of a group of people seated at an outdoor cafe, for instance (...unless it were one of those cafes...!). So, hip shooting is on the very cusp of randomness and order; you know what you generally pointed at, you just don't know precisely how the composition (or maybe focus and exposure with auto cameras) came out. I like being on the cusp of randomness, the interstitial between order and disorder. It's also fun to break the "rules" of composition, if for no other reason than to reinforce the notion that there shouldn't be rules to creativity.

I also feel that hip shots deserve to be credited to the photographer. For one, they're not entirely random. And one could also argue that whatever randomness was involved in the process (one's arm and wrist position, the stance of one's body, the precise but undefined moment of shutter release) all could be credited to one's unconscious motor movements, and perhaps also one's subconscious. There's a lot going on there, more than one would initially expect.

As for the comparison with Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, his technique was much more sophisticated than just throwing paint around. I seem to recall someone did a mathematical study of some of his images and determined them to be, in large measure, structured around some sort of fractal dimension, albeit unintended.

All that said, I don't believe hip shooting is a good substitute for a more disciplined and direct approach to street and documentary photography. Sometimes it matters a great deal what and how one directs the camera toward, in a very precisely defined manner.

~Joe

 

[DougFord]

I’m not, not going to take the shot just because I can’t get my noggin in the position of my chosen perspective. 🙄

 

[nightfly]

 

[ebino]

I feel that hip shots are becoming so ubiquitous that all of them look pretty much the same... Usually from a low angle, diagonal shots (not the best angle for composition) and that is also due to the fact that most of the shots were taken while on the move -- to make detection almost impossible.