rate your street shooting confidence/aggressiveness

rate your street shooting confidence/aggressiveness

  • 1 - I am a wuss

    Votes: 24 19.0%

  • 2 - sneak hipshots

    Votes: 14 11.1%

  • 3 - somewhere in between 2 and 4

    Votes: 68 54.0%

  • 4 - I am invincible

    Votes: 20 15.9%
  • Total voters
    126
When I started to shoot street shots, some people said to me:
Get closer - in other case, your photos will tell he is chicken 😛
Then I thought - Yes, it's true - I don't have enuff strenght 🙁 ,
but, it's true: it's very, very hard to have '' natural look '' of people, when they realise that you have camera - it's not about - are you strong or not
it's about decisive moment

that's why we are playing chess with photography ...
 
I like people to know I am taking the picture. I like the eye contact. Living in Japan it was easy, but sometimes people were just too shy.

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hammerman said:
vodid and gb hill, i will look out the negs of that day. they are buried in boxes as would be much the same for many of us. it was a memorable day but not unlike my former job. i had just left seven years in germany as a civilian "independent" photographer for the mixed allied forces, often finding myself in places "independent photographers" weren't supposed to be. that was a "2" job with the adrenalin of a "4." but i was young and unbreakable. so having a spell cast on me seemed an equal risk to being shot, i reckon. today, i live in a sleepy part of australia where no one believes my stories...just as well. i will look out the negs and see if i can get a scan. that is another thread i have started here...scanning problems... stay tuned, as they say... dj

right, i have just looked out the negs...sat'dy night here and got no life... i found two images which show her displeasure at my attention to her...i will scan them in the next days and return to this post with images as well as in my gallery if they are printable. to be honest, never printed them so this will be an exciting journey. looking at my other landscape negs of that trip across the US in 1979 i must have thought i was ansel adams... never mind. we'll see what comes up, eh? she had black clothes, a hard face and thick gray long hair...sound right?
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Glad to here you found the neg. Hope you can get a good scan. As for knowing if thats the infamous bead lady I guess we will have to here from Vodod.
 
somedays 3 and somedays 4...who really cares?

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it's really just a matter of composition, light and framing, isn't it? I mean...we have these discussions about every third week here, it gets boring after a couple years I think. Just step a couple feet further into the frame and push the shutter, thats it.

Todd
 
It depends on what Im shooting. With people im anywhere from a 2 to a 4... but with architecture and light its a 4.

With people most of the time I just take the photo and if they see me with the camera I just look at them and point to the camera with a look of, "is it alright?". Most just nod or others just kindly shake their head in a "ee, please no."
 
well, here is a pic of the woman who might be the Bead Lady.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=67247

i didn't think it appropriate to upload the pictures of her lurching at me, her next gesture as she shouted. she clearly didn't want me taking her picture so this is as much as i am prepared to publish in this format. i remember the sensation well...! perhaps in an exhibition in the near future.
 
Hammerman...thanks for posting the photo...Yep, that's the bead lady. More about the bead lady as a comment under the photo of her in your RFF gallery. Imagine a gravelly voice that is more scary than sweet..."Would you like to buy a lucky bead?" The correct response is a very polite No, Thank You. But of course, that's all in the past. I gotta admit, I sorta miss seeing the surly old bead lady...but only from a safe distance.
 
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I'm not hesitant to shoot from very close (2-5 meters) in the middle of the street.

Most people never know I was there. Over the years I've learned a few tricks to make myself 'invisible' and they don't involve a role of black tape ;-). A pleasant demeanour and a little charm also go a long way. If people ask me what I am doing I tell them I'm an artist working on a photo project. Most people consider artists to be harmless and poor, where as photographers get lumped in with the paparazzi who in the opinion of most of the public should be burned at the stake.

But regardless you are going to have to learn to live with the fact that you are intruding on people's lives for a split second and not all will be happy about it. That's just part of the territory and something you need to learn to live with. There is a great article about this as the introduction of Richard Kalvar's book "Terriens".

I also believe that a lot of this is location dependent.

It is one thing to shoot freely in the middle of Time Square or Central Park, but a whole different story in a place like Harlem or South Central Los Angeles. If you try this in the wrong neighbourhood, without easing yourself in to the community or getting sanctioned, you may be in for a trip to the hospital or worse.

HL
 
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vodid said:
Hammerman...thanks for posting the photo...Yep, that's the bead lady. More about the bead lady as a comment under the photo of her in your RFF gallery. Imagine a gravelly voice that is more scary than sweet..."Would you like to buy a lucky bead?" The correct response is a very polite No, Thank You. But of course, that's all in the past. I gotta admit, I sorta miss seeing the surly old bead lady...but only from a safe distance.
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Cool.

Last time I was in New Orleans I got shot at, because I accidentally got to close to a meth lab, while wandering through the rubble around 2:00am.

But I think you are right. The city is not what it used to be. Rap, gang culture and Katrina may have killed whatever was left of the 'old New Orleans'.
 
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