Things I found out about photographing people surreptitiously

[rfaspen]

Drunken people scare me. In so many ways.

I can appreciate the photo class "excuse". I remember when I could use that. Today, I have a similar (and honest) "excuse" when shooting in public places: "I'm doing a photo project on _____" Sometimes I'll add that I'm in a photo group/club and we have photo projects, and I'll explain the theme of the "project" I'm working on. My truthfulness and sincerity comes through and I think its very disarming. Even works on drunken people -- occasionally.

It helps that I am actually a member of a photo group, and that I assign myself projects. It also helps that I avoid the bar scene on Friday night, or homelessness. If homeless people are in my photos, its because they happen to be somewhere or doing something interesting, or interacting with subjects of my current "project". I really try to avoid the drunken.

I have had few serious negative interactions. I get plenty of suspicious looks and unspoken suspicious behaviour (which usually dissipates immediately if I happen to have a reason to provide my "excuse"), but few blow-ups or violence. The few times there was an incident, it was drunk people, or mentally-ill homeless people, or drunken mentally-ill homeless people.

 

[jvo]

hmmm...

hmmm...

It seems rather a sneeky way of shooting
Or shall I put it more blunt: A cowardly way of taking photos 😱

then i guess bruce gilden, mary ellen mark, paul strand, gary winogrand, others were all sneaky!!!

one man's sneak is another man's artist!

jvo
😀

 

[dtcls100]

I used to do a decent amount of street photography in college in Philadelphia. Really liked getting close and capturing images. Until one day I was at an outdoor food market and saw an elderly male fishmonger using a stripped down palm frond to shoo away flies. Just as I was about to take the photo with my trusty OM-1, I heard someone yell out "WATCH OUT!!!" I lowered the camera just in time to see an elderly deranged looking woman (probably the fishmonger's wife) lunging at me with a big knife. It narrowly missed me and I quickly backed off, followed by a stream of hissing and curses. I don't know if she would have actually stabbed me, but she looked deranged enough to make one not take that chance.

Guess this is the kind of experience that is in the back of many photographers' minds when they get a bit nervous about taking street photos. This experience really made me much more hesitant to take close street photos. Indeed, some years ago, I was walking on the lower east side of Manhattan, Oly 35SP loaded with Tri-x, when I wandered by a homeless shelter and saw some residents (some obvously with mental and substance abuse issues) smoking and taking drugs and joking around and singing. Quite the scene. Light was really good too. I was really tempted to stop, start a conversation and ask them if I could photograph them. But then I thought about my Philly experience, got gun shy and dropped the idea. Real shame.

 

[lukitas]

(snip)If you can't have a certain Rapport with People You might as well forget shooting them & Portraits
stay will still Life ... Flowers, cats, architecture ,landscape
😉

Helen, I must most emphatically disagree. I see several hundreds of people everyday, it is not possible to establish a rapport with everyone. Moments of rapport are rare, and those where I can point a camera even rarer. Yes, I very much appreciate those magical instances when an exchange takes place. They are exceptional.

The endeavour is to anonymously take pictures of anonymous people. I cannot see that as being wrong in itself.

Photography is in essence voyeuristic : at the simplest level, we take pictures of what we want to see. When unsuspecting people are in the picture, there is always a touch of intrusion, a taking of something, even if it is but an image. Often, this sense of intrusion is apparent even when the subject was willing. Taking a photograph is an act of aggression, of appropriation. This is just as true for microphotography as it is for pictures of zebras.

My defence is that photography is also the democratic art form par excellence. Anyone can click a shutter button; anyone, anything can be the star of a photograph. 16 seconds of fame.

cheers

 

[simonankor]

I'm just a tad blown away by your thinking that " taking a photograph is an act of aggression"
I don't perceive Photography that way... not sure if it's a 'male' perspective
You are capturing a Moment in Time, Why should that be considered Aggressive ?

Actually that's a paraphrased quote from Susan Sontag, so not so much a male's perspective. That particular concept is interesting - I don't agree with it, but it's interesting.

As for surreptitious photography - I don't like to do it, but it's a valid way of using a camera. I prefer to use the viewfinder.

 

[Silva Lining]

Well Lukitas, I really like your shots, especially the one of the guy on the bus with the dog and the girl in the stripy dress. This style of photography is one that has always interested me although I must say that I lack the b***s to do it really!

I used to work in Brussels and have many good memories of the city.

 

[lukitas]

Hey, Simonankor cheers for noticing the near Sontag quote.

I just got to the part where she talks about Chinese Photography. (She wrote in the late seventies : things may have changed.) It was all about the official version : no photograph was unposed, groups were shown 'at ease' or 'at attention', never 'in action', things were shown in full, centered in the frame. Photography as the 'truth' of persons and things. Close-ups were bourgeois, less than flattering depictions and photos of things growing oldwere not acceptable.

I quite like this sort of photography : the state portrait is not without its attractions, as is the well composed landscape and the grandiose view. But I do love the other kind. The unposed, the accidents, the Areh, Bureh and Bokeh.

Of all artists, photographers are the least connected to a style, it is the discipline where it is hardest to assign someone to a school. Photographs tend to anonymity of the author : it doesn't really matter who took it : how many people can remember the name of the photographer who shot the portrait of Che Guevarra, found on billions of T-shirts. Who cares what his name is? It's the Che!

As I am already invisible as the author of my images, I want to go one step further, become invisible when making images. Fly on the wall. All that remains is a residue of images.

Cheers.

P.S. Helen, I love you!

 

[simonankor]

I have to say, Lukitas, this is one off the most civilised threads I've seen on this topic. It's nice to be in a place where the virtual tomatoes of prejudice are thrown a little less often!

 

[giganova]

I always try to "own" the moment, point the camera straight at them, and if they saw me or heard the shutter, I look into their face with a big disarming smile. Sometimes someone says "(Why) did you take a picture of me?" and I simply reply "You are beautiful!"

 

[lukitas]

I always try to "own" the moment, point the camera straight at them, and if they saw me or heard the shutter, I look into their face with a big disarming smile. Sometimes someone says "(Why) did you take a picture of me?" and I simply reply "You are beautiful!"

I've tried that too. Can be disarming.
But for some subjects such directness doesn't always work.
I"m fifty and a half, fat and bearded. If I were to approach a young muslim beauty in that manner, I expect I would get clobbered.
I see hundreds of these saintly young ladies, and I so much want to get pictures of them not looking posed.

I guess there are the limits of shooting 'en stoemelings', you can't always get your camera to where it should be.

mebbe I'l find a way.

cheers

 

[gb hill]

They did not primarily shoot that way.

Winogrand, I know his work, though know nothing about his shooting style cept for liking wide

Winogrand always brought the camera to his eye. He was very quick about it but certainly not "sneaky"

I read he used a 28mm lens.

 

[thart2009]

Well, I'm a coward when it comes to street photography. But it's a thrill to try and overcome that and get better. Good thread.

 

[Doug]

Well, I'm a coward when it comes to street photography. But it's a thrill to try and overcome that and get better. Good thread.

Yes, I think many of us are, maybe most of us. It takes confidence and assertiveness to overcome that tendency to turn away and lose the photo.

 

[JoeV]

The endeavour is to anonymously take pictures of anonymous people. I cannot see that as being wrong in itself.

Photography is in essence voyeuristic : at the simplest level, we take pictures of what we want to see. When unsuspecting people are in the picture, there is always a touch of intrusion, a taking of something, even if it is but an image. Often, this sense of intrusion is apparent even when the subject was willing. Taking a photograph is an act of aggression, of appropriation. This is just as true for microphotography as it is for pictures of zebras.

Lukitas, I appreciate your thoughts here, as they remind me that photography is essentially an extension of the act of seeing, one step removed through the intermediary of the camera device and its resulting image.

Yet, I am reminded that in some cultures and contexts even the direct human gaze can be confrontational, the so-called "mad-dogging" commonly seen in youth gang culture, for example, where the mere act of being seen as the observer is a direct confrontation.

As I recall, this is also common to some animal species, the direct gaze by another presenting a direct challenge.

And so I see the challenge to photography is increasingly a challenge to our role as observers; there are those who do not wish to be observed, however the method.

~Joe

 

[airfrogusmc]

Joe I actual have had a much different experience. One of my final portfolios when I was in college was a documentary on Maxwell St, Chicago. It was in the mid 1980s before it was cleaned up, the university of Illinois Chicago took possession of the area and moved to a designated, sanitized area. That was really me first real taste of shooting on the streets and I was the only one out with a camera shooting there. I was hassled daily, all the time. Sometimes it became dangerous but I was lucky and able to defuse those situations.

Today you can't go a block in the city and not see several photographers. People have become numb to it especially if you are carrying a small discrete camera. I rarely get hassled.

 

[lukitas]

I just saw a documentary on Moriyama Daido (there are several on youtube).

Very happy to note that he also uses the 'studiously looking at something else than the subject' trick. I also like the Winogrand approach : scope out a developing situation, move to about where I need to be, and then do a very fast up-and-down with the camera. If I'm fast enough, they often don't notice. And when I move the camera to anywhere else than in front of my eye, they may notice, but not fast enough to change their expression.

I got lucky a few times today :

 

[lukitas]

Here's another sample :
I was sitting in front of the Café Central, talking to a couple of Ethiopians, when this rather diffident guy came up, unsure of wether he could occupy a seat. As soon as he sat down, I lifted the camera to the right of my face and snapped. I don't think I could have got the same expression if I'd taken the time to frame.



It is liberating, to let loose, not worry about framing so much, or focus, just look and click.

cheers

 

[lukitas]

YMMV, but I think that there are limits to street photography, and I believe I met my own personal limit on that particular day.

If he wasn't ashamed of showing himself in the attire he chose, you shouldn't be ashamed of taking his picture. I wonder if his ire wasn't a ploy to make an event out of your taking the picture. People should know that they are filmed the moment they stick their nose out of the door...

But to avoid this sort of 'event' is one of the reasons I often try to shoot without being obvious about it. The other is that I like to catch life as if I wasn't there.

It really helps, not to have the camera in front of your face. If you watch your subject, you can react faster to the way the person looks at you, an apologetic or admiring smile can do wonders. If you look attentively at something else than what your camera is pointing at, very few notice anything. If they don't notice, it doesn't matter : only seven people will look at the photo, and by the time it becomes an Icon of twenty-teens photography, they'll be flattered.

Cheers

 

[Contarama]

If someone snaps at me in the streets...better get ready for a conversation...about lenses. LOL 🙂

Great thread lukitas...thanks.

 

[lukitas]

It is time to show some more of the results of my experiments.

This lady was walking towards me, on my left. I swept the camera up and to the left and shot when she was closest. Pleased about the motion blur in the background :

Similar, but not :

I lifted the camera to the right of my face, he was intrigued, but i got him just before he smiled :

This kid was looking at my face, guess how I held the camera :

Camera on my belly, hanging from the neckstrap. Getting better at judging the distance at which to shoot :

Fiddled with the camera while walking past. shot at near 90 degrees to my angle of view. Clearly, she was at most mildly interested :

It feels good to be a bit more adventurous about how I hold the camera. I don't spray and pray, every one of those shots is a one of. I aim and shoot, but it is not required that my eye be looking at the viewfinder.

Cheers!