Street Photography - A Lesson Learning

One of the most interesting threads here recently. From my experience, street photography is a mixture of luck, timing and being in the scene. I think Capa`s quote about being close is related to the latter. Not physically close but being in the scene.

Great photos, Gregory !!
 
maddoc said:
One of the most interesting threads here recently. From my experience, street photography is a mixture of luck, timing and being in the scene. I think Capa`s quote about being close is related to the latter. Not physically close but being in the scene.
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Very well said Gabor! Btw., I recently noticed a certain change in my "style". But I'm not sure where it comes from. I'm open for comments (see my flickr site - no blatant self-praise intendet haha)
 
I agree with "luck, timing and being in the scene". I think half the battle (or a third of the battle) is being there with your camera set to the correct light and your eyes open and your mind cognizant. Every good shot I've ever gotten has been because I was ready for it and the camera was in my hand. The second third is luck; you were lucky enough to be in the best spot where the opportunity presented itself. Of course you can do certain things to increase your "luck" in this regard, the most obvious is putting yourself in a situation where lots of things are happening or scouting out where the best light is. The third third is timing; not missing it! Hitting the shutter at the right moment.
 
Reminds me of Simon Bruty's presentation re: sports photography @ Look3 last year ("Luck, Preparation, or Both"): his bottom line = luck is arbitrary, preparation is not.

Bogotron said:
I agree with "luck, timing and being in the scene". I think half the battle (or a third of the battle) is being there with your camera set to the correct light and your eyes open and your mind cognizant. Every good shot I've ever gotten has been because I was ready for it and the camera was in my hand. The second third is luck; you were lucky enough to be in the best spot where the opportunity presented itself. Of course you can do certain things to increase your "luck" in this regard, the most obvious is putting yourself in a situation where lots of things are happening or scouting out where the best light is. The third third is timing; not missing it! Hitting the shutter at the right moment.
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Besides preparation, luck, timing, being there and such, one has to shoot A LOT. Not only shoot a lot, but be able to edit intelligently. That means being self critical, which is frequently very difficult (for a variety of reasons). How many frames did Robert Frank shoot for the book "The Americans" that resulted in only 83 images?
 
Mike, that sounds good; I'll PM you next time I'm down there.

So this weekend I tried my hand at street (results here: http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91367) and learned a few things. First, I really can't imagine doing it without hyperfocusing in advance. To catch the "right" moment you don't have time to think, much less focus. Even the best AF on an SLR seems like it would be too slow.

Second, I think there's a balance that needs to be struck between involving yourself in a scene and objectively scanning that scene for your next shot. Third, it's become clear to me how well suited the RF is to street photography. Probably 60% of the DSLR photogs I walked past were fiddling with their cameras at the time.
 
Really nice work Sine, I like 1 and 4 the best.

Though everyone's mileage may vary, for my money RFs are the perfect tool for street photography and the only tool for me. It's not really the "unobtrusiveness", though they are smaller than SLRs and I like the fact that since they don't cover my entire face I have a better sense of what's going on outside the frame. I feel more in tune with what I'm shooting when I'm looking through an RF viewfinder than an SLR viewfinder. For me, scale focusing is faster and more efficient than any auto focus system in existence.

I was standing on my usual corner in DC a couple of weeks ago and came upon a nice fellow who was shooting with his Nikon DSLR. We chatted a while looking for shots and every so often one of us would break off for a second to take a picture. After I had taken a couple of mine he asked me how I was able to focus so quickly. I explained a bit about scale focusing to him, and how I knew my subject was going to be in focus before I even brought the camera up to my eye. It's such an effective and invaluable technique for street shooting, and the DoF scales on these excellent RF lenses definitely make it easier.

Of course as the light dims this becomes less of an advantage, but then manually focusing with a rangefinder has always been easier to me than manually focusing with an SLR (and every SLR lens I've ever used has been awful autofocusing in poor light).
 
Bogotron said:
...I was standing on my usual corner in DC a couple of weeks ago and came upon a nice fellow who was shooting with his Nikon DSLR. We chatted a while looking for shots and every so often one of us would break off for a second to take a picture. After I had taken a couple of mine he asked me how I was able to focus so quickly. I explained a bit about scale focusing to him, and how I knew my subject was going to be in focus before I even brought the camera up to my eye. It's such an effective and invaluable technique for street shooting, and the DoF scales on these excellent RF lenses definitely make it easier. ...
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You're making a very important point: Many of today's DSLRs sport AF lenses that - while theoretically suitable for zone focussing - lack DoF scales! For that reason, most users of modern DSLRs have become completely oblivious of the concept of zone focussing.

I am meeting infrequently with other photographers for street photowalks, and I always recommend them to prepare specific circular DoF slide rules for their prime lenses / selected focal lengths of their zoom lenses. See the DOFmaster website for further details. Using such scales can make an enormous difference for the results obtained.
 





























While it's easy to dump on the DSLR, you must consider that it has many attributes such as high ISO and in the case of the Nikon D3, using Nikkor AIS glass (manual focus). I still say that using the Leica M cameras and the Nikon D3 system is getting the best of both worlds. If being out there and pounding the streets with a camera for years has taught me anything, it's that the best camera is the one you've got with you and which is ready to go. Zone focusing is a legitimate tech for street shooting, and so is using the Leica M6 and 50 1.0 Noctilux (the picture of a guy yawning in this thread) or using a Canon 50 1.0 with the 5D2 (the shot of my son petting a dog at night in a parking lot at 6400 ISO @ 1.0). It's all good.

Getting worked up over cameras/lenses/styles is just a way for us not to get out there and take the shots our mind's eye can only dream about. After 25+ years, I really feel I'm only beginning to get it. The thing is to align your tech with equipment and mindset and street environment. There are pictures to be had when all the links in the chain connect.

Get out and take some pictures. Show us what you find.

Gregory
 
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In all fairness to SLR users, using zone/scale focusing (or hyperfocus) is not as easy for them because much of what they see through the VF may be out of focus. The DoF preview button/switch or live view through the review screen is the obvious solution, but not all dSLR models have those features.

Arjay said:
You're making a very important point: Many of today's DSLRs sport AF lenses that - while theoretically suitable for zone focussing - lack DoF scales! For that reason, most users of modern DSLRs have become completely oblivious of the concept of zone focussing.

I am meeting infrequently with other photographers for street photowalks, and I always recommend them to prepare specific circular DoF slide rules for their prime lenses / selected focal lengths of their zoom lenses. See the DOFmaster website for further details. Using such scales can make an enormous difference for the results obtained.
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Nikkor AIS said:
Getting worked up over cameras/lenses/styles is just a way for us not to get out there and take the shots our mind's eye can only dream about. After 25+ years, I really feel I'm only beginning to get it. The thing is to align your tech with equipment and mindset and street environment. There are pictures to be had when all the links in the chain connect.
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Very true! (and great shots too!)

In the end I settled on an M3 and an M6 0.85, with 35mm and 50mm lenses, a single 28mm and one 80mm for shooting street. Thats it.

All lenses are LTM, so I can use them on my prewar IIIa-syn as well when I feel like it.

Looking forward to summer holidays, I'll be visiting Luxembourg city, Switzerland and will most likely have some days in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and possibly Brussels to shoot. All street. 😎
 
I recently changed the way i think when i'm out and about with the cam. I was too aware of my camera, shy to take most of the shots i wanted and looking too much. I don't look as much now, instead i trust that when i see a shot, then i'll think of the camera and then taking that shot is a far more natural process and i seem to be more invisible to the world around me. We human beings seem to pick up feelings from each other, it seems to me that if i worry what people think of me photographing, then they tend to look at me as a voyeuristic wierdo with a camera. When my picture taking is natural spontanious and joyful it seems that the people around me respect me too. Basically i trust that i'll notice a shot rather than hunting for one and my photography is more natural,,perhaps then i'm not really even then noticing anything other than my own involvment in a moment because that moment is creative rather than cerebral.
Thanks for this post, i find it interesting and you sound like a thoughtful photographer, try not to worry too much what people think and stay safe.
 
Since this thread started, I've made a point of being blissfully unaware of other people's paranoia and issues regarding what I photograph. It's really liberating from an artistic point of view. When I see something as a subject of interest, I shoot it. Period. Stressing about other people's "issues" is a recipe for leaving your camera at home. And I must say that my youngest son, who is learning photography with the FM2 I gave him, is approaching it the same way. I suggest taking your kids out to shoot with you sometimes and watching/learning how they interact with the world through a camera. I'm just in awe of how fearless and uncomplicated he is and if the results from his first roll are any indication, he is on the right path on his own photographic journey.



















Shot my son sleeping with his "first" roll of film. I didn't set this up; this is how he went to sleep. After we got in from shooting, he couldn't stop asking questions about aperture shutter speeds and talking about getting out and finishing the second
roll 😀.

Gregory
 
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wild thought here. Did you think about talking to the preacher and find out about him? How often does he go and preach on a corner. Does he have a church proper? How old is he? Where is he from? Talk to him and then ask him if you can make a few photos while he's preaching, because you find him interesting, NOT ridiculous. He's a man who stands up to a world that largely doesn't care and shouts a message everyone ignores. That's an interesting subject. Find out about him. Don't make empty shots and scurry away. Ask him if you can follow him for a day and photograph. Make sure to get him prints!!! But people surprisingly open up to being photographer by strangers. My theory is that when you talk to them, it lets them know that you are interested in them, their lives, rather than just taking a picture, mocking them, and then running. When you take the time to talk to someone, they realize that you like making photographs, not mocking people on facebook.
 
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I don't know about getting involved with people who give you a negative vibe. While it "sounds" like a good idea, in reality it may not be the best one. And I really don't see why it's necessary. I've been doing the "shoot-and-go" thing for decades and I'm not really interested in getting to know everyone whose picture I choose to snap. I want their picture, not their life story. I don't care to know their name or anything about them for the most part. As far as mocking people on Facebook, I don't see how that translates from taking someone's picture on the street? Is that what people do on Facebook? Serious question -- I've never been on Facebook.

Getting back to your point, the fact that the preacher's followers have a problem is their problem. I'm not sure if getting to know folks like that is in the photographer's best interest. There are plenty of street corners full of interesting subjects instead of wasting energy on the haters.




Gregory
 
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Nikkor AIS said:
There are plenty of . . . interesting subjects
Gregory
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Agreed. I like being on the move. Invisible. Capturing images as I see them which is usually at-a-glance. I don't stare, and neither, mostly, do my pictures.

I subscribe to a the Heisenberg effect of photo taking. As the observer, I must affect the image as soon as I am a "factor" in the scene. Might be very little, but less is better.
 

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Thanks for the thought, Dan - However, I think I'm better off having brushed it off and just moving on from the experience. Next time I'm in the neighborhood (which will be soon), if I see the preacher maybe I'll take some pictures, maybe I won't. There's definitely no shortage of photographic subject matter, and I've been in the same area since then and have made pictures of other things, other people. I'm content to move on; I take hundreds of photographs every week, most of them won't be anything special, hopefully a few will be good enough. I do my best to remain undeterred.

Like others I think I prefer to shoot and move on - I have however altered my approach in a way. I used to be much more reluctant to ever ask people explicitly to take their photos unless it was a proper portrait, as I hate that certain "posed" look you get when someone knows that a picture is coming. However, a couple of recent scenarios (both involving owners and their dogs) I felt were great opportunities on the street, and since I felt I needed the shots and needed to get them right I did ask permission rather than risk a one-off shot that didn't work. I tried to be conscious of not having the situations look too contrived - I guess I'll see how successful I was at that.
 
Bogotron said:
Next others I think I prefer to shoot and move on - I have however altered my approach in a way. I used to be much more reluctant to ever ask people explicitly to take their photos unless it was a proper portrait, as I hate that certain "posed" look you get when someone knows that a picture is coming. However, a couple of recent scenarios (both involving owners and their dogs) I felt were great opportunities on the street, and since I felt I needed the shots and needed to get them right I did ask permission rather than risk a one-off shot that didn't work. I tried to be conscious of not having the situations look too contrived - I guess I'll see how successful I was at that.
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I think that`s right. Don`t be prescriptive. Better to be flexible in your approach.Sometimes I ask ,sometimes not.
 
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