Street photographer. Street Photography - Street Photo Notes and Simple Tips. Dress so that your appearance does not cause excessive attention of others
Bold in their truthfulness and invariably sincere works of street photographers reflect, like a mirror, social realities. Entering the city streets with a camera in their hands, masters of their craft tirelessly and selflessly create "time capsules", capturing small and large events from the life of citizens on film. Years later, our descendants will turn to their urban landscapes to find out what the 21st century really was. We will get to know the most talented street photographers who carefully preserve our history for them.
Eric Kim
In the world of street photography, Eric Kim is one of the most respected artists. He received universal recognition thanks to his amazing spontaneous images and his desire to communicate with fans. In his personal blog, the photographer readily shares useful professional information and thoughts on how to find personal meaning in creativity and make his own work popular and popular. Eric Kim leads the YouTube channel, where he not only gives valuable tips on photography, but also holds master classes.
Lee Jeffries
As part of his Lost Angels project, British master Lee Jeffries presented strikingly deep photo portraits of the homeless. Working on them, he did not just put moments of life in the frame, but established sincere relations with his models. That is why the works of Jeffries "have a soul."
Boogie
A street photographer with Serbian roots, Vladimir Milivoevich, better known as Boogie, became famous thanks to pictures taken on the streets of New York. His work, done in classic black and white, is a frank look at the shady sides of life, which a well-fed citizen prefers to forget about. The heroes of Boogie's photographs are often drug dealers and street children. The depressing, and sometimes creepy shots made by Vladimir Milivoevich serve as a reminder that we cannot pretend that these phenomena simply do not exist in life.
Rui Palha
Pictures of the Lisbon master Rui Palha were made in the style of classic street photography. Capturing fragments of the life of Portuguese streets as if furtively, he paints a portrait of the capital city. “Photography is a very important part of my living space,” says Rui Palha. “It should open and convey what the heart feels and sees at a certain moment.”
Shinya Arimoto
Shinya Arimoto, a professor at the Tokyo School of Visual Arts, photographs eccentric residents of the Japanese capital in his free time. He wanders around Tokyo for hours and tries to communicate as much as possible with people to take really good pictures. The frames obtained as a result of such a “hunt” can destroy all the stereotypes about Japan that have ever existed.
Donato Di Camillo
Donato Di Camillo came to photography in an unusual way - serving a prison sentence. He was released in 2012 and by this time he had already become acquainted with the work of contemporary street photography masters - William Klein and Bruce Gilden. Models of Donato Di Camillo, as a rule, are people from the marginal layers of society, because he himself considers himself, in a sense, an outsider. The photographer never tires of admiring a person. “All people are different, and I like it, as well as how beautiful we are in our uniqueness. Bad, good, indifferent, they will never cease to amaze me. People give answers to all my questions,” the photographer admits. “The smallest detail - a look or an unusual gait - can make me pick up a camera and shoot. "
Konstantin Mashinsky
Russian photographer Konstantin Mashinsky worked for a year on his project “Z65 Parisians”, studying the faces of residents of the French capital. However, when it was finished, his interest in them did not fade. Konstantin Mashinsky continued to work and put together an impressive archive capable of telling many amazing stories. In his photo, a variety of people - from elegantly dressed women to overloaded linear cooks. All of them are ready to challenge our ideas about the cosmopolitan city of Paris.
Phil Penman
The original black and white photographs of Phil Penman capture the intriguing and multifaceted daily life of New York. Being a native of Great Britain, he nonetheless calls this city his home. When Phil Penman doesn’t take pictures of celebrities for USA Today or People, he, armed with a camera and a bicycle, sets off for New York streets. "When I leave the house in the morning, I have only one hope - to go back with a picture that I will be really proud of," Penman says. "I am attracted to people who do not try to be cool, but at the same time have their own unique style."
Zach Arias
Atlanta photographer Zach Arias is known for his work with music stars and commercial giants such as Fujifilm and Coca-Cola. The master applies bold dynamic solutions, gleaned in creative collaboration with them, going out onto the streets of the city with a camera, and as a result creates real masterpieces. The original works gave Arias a reputation as one of the most talented artists and inspired more than one photographer to transfer his cameras to the city streets.
Angelo Ferillo
Once, Angelo Ferrillo preferred photography to engineering, and since then has never looked back. He successfully combines the work of a photojournalist with a passion for street photography. Whether Angelo Ferillo works on spontaneous photographs in his native Italy or on a project about the Paris Bataclan after the terrorist attack, he invariably remains a skilful storyteller, able to “write” stories on film.
Street photography (or street photography), as a direction, appeared relatively long ago - about 130 years ago. As soon as the cameras became portable, and the process of developing and printing was simplified, photography broke out of the cramped studios into the streets. Photographers began to document the world around them. In particular, they filmed in urban areas where life moves fast. The desire to capture the changes taking place around was at first instinctive.
Famous authors such as Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Diana Arbus, Harry Vinogrand, Martin Parr can be considered pioneers of street photography.
They laid the foundations of the street photo movement and their work undoubtedly deserves your attention.
A century later, not much has changed in the street photo genre: yes, cameras have become even more compact, and graphic editors have replaced development and printing. Scientific and technological progress has greatly simplified the path of the author's street photo to the viewer. But the idea of \u200b\u200bthis direction has remained unchanged.
So what is street photography?
The subject of street photography is mostly people in public places. More precisely, street photography can be described as a genre in which there is no place for posing and staging, in which the photographer explores and captures modern society and the relationship between characters and their surroundings.
The main elements of a street photo: spontaneity, careful observation and "wide open eyes", the willingness to capture everything that appears in the viewfinder and seems significant, exciting, interesting.
Another key aspect of street photography is the feeling that the shot was not planned, without prior agreement. Therefore, photographs taken at public events differ in sensations from random ones - in the first case, it is rarely possible to make a spontaneous shot. However, they can also be ranked as street photography - there is always room for flexibility and experimentation within the genre.
“OK, where to start?” - you probably ask. In principle, for starters, all you need is a camera, city streets and free time. Discreet clothes and a good mood still will not hurt.
“Do I need some special camera or lens?” - absolutely not.
Technical equipment of a street photographer - this is exactly the camera that you have now, and which you can always carry with you. “Mirror”, “soap box” or even a mobile phone’s camera - any device that takes photos is worthy of attention.
Of course, “terry” street photographers prefer rangefinders, especially “Watering can” (analog M7 or digital M9). Mirrorless micro 4/3 standard digital cameras are now widely used - especially in combination with the old "film" optics, very interesting results can be obtained. In any case, for shooting a “straight” the size of the camera is important first of all, and the smaller it is, the better.
It's time to give you some practical advice.
The figure is our everything
Suppose you are a beginner, and you don’t have a camera yet, but you are very confident in your abilities and want to start your journey with a film. This is a normal desire, and I in no way presume to dissuade you. However, there is a statement by Henri Cartier Bresson “your first ten thousand frames will be worse”, against which - no arguing. Note also that the quote is from the era of analog cameras, so ... if you don’t have the feeling that you have long crossed the line of at least 10,000 frames - look towards digital cameras. Over time, you will understand if you need an analog camera.
Pause
The city is like a living organism, people in it are in constant motion, it is like a big anthill. And the photographer is also in this stream. But moving and shooting at the same time is not always the best option. It is worth periodically pausing, stopping (for example, at each intersection) for several minutes and waiting, “scanning” the environment with your eyes. You can, for example, stand facing the stream of people and "catch a fish." Surely you will be rewarded with an interesting plot at the first stop - and all you had to do was pause while walking.
(ss) Mario Mancuso
Focus on the look
Emotion can be hidden, it can be faked, but the eyes will tell the whole truth. If you are shooting a portrait in the genre of street photo, you can’t find a better way than focusing on the eyes of a person.
(ss) Dipayan Bhattacharjee
Details
Street photography is not limited to capturing the plot with a set of variables such as geometric, contrast, color or semantic rhythm. Sometimes it’s worth paying attention to details: hands, faces, wardrobe details or a lonely standing object - shot in close-up, they can “play up” and tell something that simply can’t be seen in the general frame.
(cc) Liz Kasameyer
High sensitivity
If you use a digital camera, do not limit yourself to low ISO settings. Of course, in the daytime and in clear weather, using ISO 1600 or higher makes no sense, but in conditions with insufficient light it will not be too reasonable to chase the minimum amount of noise, especially since even loud noises can be "beaten" in a street photo - translate to b / w, for example. Another tangible plus from raising the sensitivity is the ability to shoot with a slow shutter speed. Sometimes you will not have a second chance, and a blurry image due to shaking can become an annoying misunderstanding.
(cc) takato marui
Slow shutter speed
All the plots of street photos are different and require an individual approach. And if in the previous paragraph I suggested increasing the sensitivity so that the shutter speed was shorter, now I will offer the opposite. It is with the help of a long shutter speed (for example, 1/30 sec) that you can transfer movement in the frame, sometimes this is the only right option. Even on a sunny day, you can achieve a slow shutter speed - closing the aperture and lowering the ISO will help you. In particularly difficult cases, gray filters can be used.
(cc) Gary H. Spielvogel
Shooting with wiring
Do not forget about shooting “with wiring”. Together with a slow shutter speed, this is a great way to show movement in the frame and focus on a moving subject, naturally blurring the environment (the degree of blurring depends on the shutter speed and speed of the subject). Not the easiest way, it requires certain skills and practice.
(cc) Juan José Aza
Closed diaphragm
The "fathers" of the genre made all their famous shots small rangefinders. Have you tried to visit them for sharpness? If not, I assure you, this activity is not for the faint of heart - to rotate the lens until the two images are combined into one. Considering that many scenes were shot not just quickly - “from the hip”, I’ll tell you how the focus problem was solved: the diaphragm was closed and hyperfocal sharpness was set. So if you want to get an old-school street photo, it's not enough to make it black and white, you need hyperfocal sharpness and aperture values \u200b\u200bfrom 5.6 and higher.
(cc) Bürenger ZYLA
The plot without a person in the frame
Street photography does not imply the presence of a person in the frame. It is not so much about people, how much about human nature itself, so you can not get hung up on the presence of people in the frame. It happens that the urban environment itself gives us food for thought and offers excellent stories in which people, by the way, can also be present: on posters, posters, posters. Also, a photo of the city without the presence of a person in the frame will help to better reveal the urbanistic spirit, and the presence of a person will be somehow traced in such works.
(cc) Chuck Coker
Of course, these recommendations cannot cover such a multifaceted and immense world of street photography. I hope that I will still have the opportunity to return to this exciting topic and continue our conversation. And that's all for today. Running to the streets, shoot!
Often, photographers looking for interesting subjects become perfectionists. They immediately want to take the perfect shot, without any extra details or a littered horizon.
Yes, these technical aspects (usually quite fixable) will be important at the stage of selecting the best personnel. But when you go out on a photo hunt, it’s better to free your brain from unnecessary thoughts that can kill the ability to notice and quickly capture interesting stories.
The tip is simple: enjoy. Be spontaneous, trust your instincts. The less you worry about the quality of the photo, the more good shots you make. The pictures of many famous street photographers have cropped legs and a littered horizon, but this does not spoil their work at all.
Weber-street-photography.com In search of interesting scenes, photographers sometimes travel several kilometers, hoping to find the very magical place where they will take a masterpiece shot. But the peculiarity of street photography is that you can take a good photo anywhere.
Ask yourself, running across a boring square or street, why do you think there are no interesting stories here. Instead of wasting energy on walking, slow down and look around.
3. Do not be afraid to take bad photos
Photo.davidjakelic.com Unsuccessful frames are even the most. It is important to take such pictures, and not to be upset because of supposedly crooked hands and lack of skill. Bad photos will help to shade good frames. Take it as a practice in order to catch really rare and valuable moments for photo masterpieces.
4. Pay attention to the light.
Richardsandler.com If you follow the advice to abandon street marathons, you can better understand how to work with light. Pay attention to its sources, how objects with contrasting areas are illuminated. That light will tell you how best to build a frame.
5. Notice people far away from you
Weber-street-photography.com Watch passersby, evaluate their appearance and emotions. You can notice a bright interesting character from a distance through the viewfinder (especially if you have a lens with good zoom). In this case, you can prepare to take an interesting picture in advance, before the person comes closer to you. Experiment, make your own scripts and stories.
6. Think about the future
Chris-sorensen.com An important strategic point: try not to take what is happening around for granted. Think about how your photos will be perceived after 50 years. What will go out of fashion that will seem strange? Will a person sitting on a bench with a tablet be interesting?
Celebrate key milestones, signs of the times. So you add great value to your pictures.
7. Be consistent
Maciejdakowicz.com Street photography with seeming simplicity is a rather difficult genre. In order to improve your skills, you must act consistently, have a shooting schedule.
Maybe you will take half a day on a street photo once a week, or 30 minutes a day during the lunch break, or time after work. Perhaps you will shoot non-stop, interrupting only for lunch.
In any case, doing this all the time, you can not just improve your pictures. Over time, you will develop your own style, and interesting stories will find you yourself.
8. Use the camera as a key
Guido-steenkamp.com A huge plus of the camera - it is the key to getting new experiences. The thirst to take a good shot makes you go outside when everyone watches popular TV shows, taking pictures at night, in rain and snowstorm. You can go where you have never been before.
In addition, you are sure to make new friends. The camera helps to break the ice in a relationship, and your portrait will open a person from a different, unknown side.
9. Catch gestures and emotions
Erickimphotography.com The task of the photographer is to call the viewer, who will consider the picture. Try to determine what meaning your photo has, whether it will please or make you empathize. Think about what kind of emotion a gesture or the look of the person you photographed evokes. You must make sure that the viewer himself answers all the questions.
10. Study books on photography
Look for new sources for inspiration. Take pictures day, night, study the books of famous photographers, preferably working in different styles. You will draw a huge number of ideas that will help you rise to a new level.
- Anton Vershovsky, Street Photography. Opening the plane. " The book of the St. Petersburg photographer, who began shooting at 7 years old.
- Brian Peterson, “How to shoot masterpieces with any camera. The power of exposure "and" In search of a frame. The idea, color and composition in photography. ” A teacher of photography talks about the basics of working with a camera.
- Lee Frost, “Black and White Photography. Simple ways to get artistic pictures ”,“ Night and evening shooting ”. Practical advice of the famous English photographer.
Street photography today has turned into a full-fledged genre of photography, and maybe even art. One can argue with the last statement, but you must admit that it is precisely the art to be able to get a frame that will appeal not only to the author of the photo, but also to dozens, and even thousands of people.
So hundreds of people roam around cities and countries, armed with cameras of varying degrees of advancement. Someone has an ordinary soap box, and someone carries a camera with him, at a cost comparable to a pretty good car. They resemble hunters hunting down prey. The production of a street photographer is a freeze-frame of your life, your emotions, an important or not very event. It is possible that those whom the photographer took in a few minutes will already forget about the fleeting fact in his life, but everything will remain on the picture.
Tip one: Street photography is democratic and absolutely undemanding to technology. It doesn't matter which camera you have. The main thing is what and how you shoot. You can do street photography without having a camera at all. Modern smartphones allow you to take good pictures.
What the street photographer takes and what the street photo genre is about
If you do not argue for a long time, then street photography is about the life of people and the people themselves, with their joys and grief, with their thoughts and experiences. These are streets, but the streets are not empty, but filled with people, traffic. About movement - when we say the word "movement", we most often imagine someone walking or that riding, flying. In fact, movement is a broader concept. Thought is also movement. Only inanimate objects are static in themselves. Like death, it is also static.
In the last century there was such a fashion - to photograph deceased relatives, giving them a lively pose. Such photos look creepy - this is an imitation of life and it is unnatural. Death does not move - this is the end, a complete stop. Any life is dynamic. Any living object is in dynamics, even if it just stands and smokes:
Street Photography - Moscow 2016 Sometimes street photography is called any picture of the city. This is not true. There is a very clear division into the city landscape and street photo. The city landscape, which I will discuss in the next article, is a separate genre of photography, where the hero is the city itself, its architecture, landscape. Street photography is primarily people. It doesn’t matter whether a person walks, rides a bicycle or a car, he just stands thinking, the person is the main character of street photography. The difference, as you see, is. In one case, the main plot is the creation of man, in the other - the man himself.
Moscow - May 2016 The main feature of street photography
Street photography is a complete lack of production. You do not prepare the site, do not force your models to stand there, take such and such a pose, smile or cry. You don’t even know who will become your model and what he or she will do in a second. He may cry, or he may laugh, or he will notice you and send to hell, and he will chase after you with very bad desires.
Tip Two: When shooting outdoors, use telephoto lenses or compact cameras with high magnification. The main thing in street photography is naturalness, and what naturalness, when you know that you are being shot. You always expect a bird to fly out now. This is in the best case, and in the worst - people can be categorically against being shot. Therefore, it is better to shoot from afar, armed with good optics.
Victory Park - May 2016 Who to shoot and what events to capture
Who to shoot? A complex and at the same time simple question that can be answered unambiguously - people. People, man, woman or man, children or one child. No matter who. It is important how and at what moment. So we come to the most important thing - at the time of shooting. When to press the button, and when not to. Here the question is not only in the shooting technique, but there are also aesthetic and ethical aspects. There are a lot of questions, and most of them do not have a definite answer. Each photographer decides for himself. Whether to film people at a funeral, heartbroken or not, to film the expression of feelings of love, rage, aggression or not to film. What do all street photographers agree on - you can shoot moments of joy and happiness. Is it worth it to take off the joy of an alcoholic who bought a bottle or just got a hangover or the satisfaction of a job well done by a housewife who had just slaughtered a chicken for lunch? Complicated. I repeat once again - each photographer decides for himself what is permissible and what is not.
Third tip: If you want to get a strong shot, it is best to shoot at holidays or some events. People at such moments are more emotional and less restrained. Watch people at street festivals - they are liberated, they think less about how they look. More emotions - better photography.
Hermitage Garden - a feast of food When to shoot
Any time of the day. You are limited only by the technical parameters of your equipment. You can shoot in the afternoon, morning or night. It does not matter. The main thing is to see what you want to shoot. But in general, it is better when there is good lighting - it can be the sun, street lamps. Otherwise, noise can ruin your photo. Although, sometimes the noise is added on purpose. But, nevertheless, it is worth remembering that the less light, the longer your shutter speed and higher ISO. And also remember that the less light, the more your picture will be noisier or blurry, and maybe both will turn the picture into an incomprehensible mess, mess. You can, of course, then say that this is such an idea, and they say that I see the world. But we are not talking about painting, but about photography that captures the event. An event, not your state of mind.
Evening Arbat - July 2016 Color or black and white photography - which is better?
Different photographers have very different ideas about color. Someone believes that street photography should only be black and white, someone assumes that a street photo can be color. In fact, color is unimportant. Color is not an end in itself and not a canon. The plot is important and what you want to emphasize. Let's talk about what color is. Color is our subjective perception of the reflection of the light flux from objects. For a person there are no identical colors - each perceives colors differently. Pink or red - this is understandable, but there are details. Are the details important or not important? God knows. There are only two colors that we will perceive the same way - black and white. Even color blind people do not confuse these colors. That is, if you want all people to see the same picture in color, then black and white photography is preferable. But the point is not even how we perceive color, but in the plot and in what we want to convey. I will give an example. We remove the weightlifter during a jerk or hold weight. The veins tighten, the face turns red, the eyes crawl out of their sockets, the whole face is tense. What do you want to convey? If only emotional stress, then the black and white version is better. The viewer's eye will not be distracted by the color of the face or hands of the athlete. And if you want to convey physical stress, then a color picture will be more appropriate - the color perfectly conveys our physical condition.
Street basketball - tension is transmitted not only in movement and emotions, but also in color I noticed that strong open emotions are better conveyed precisely by color photography. A black and white photo reveals what people sometimes want to hide. It is possible that this is a false impression, but there is something in this, in my opinion.
Fourth tip: Shoot in color. Then, when processing photos, you’ll figure out which is better. When you take pictures on the street, you won’t be able to immediately understand what you shot. But when processing photos there is already time to consider and think.
About composition in street photography
When we shoot in the studio or take a family photo, we create, build reality and push people into it. That is, we create reality according to our ideas about how it should look. Street photography is different. We do not create the world around us, but we only observe it and record events in a real environment that does not depend on our idea of \u200b\u200bit. A street photographer is not a builder, he is an observer. Attentive, imaginative, but observer. I note that when plotting the plot, we can choose a place, a shooting point, adjust the focus - to ambush.
There are two categories of photographers. One can be compared with an ordinary hunter, who wanders through the forest and looks for game on the branches. It is possible that he will come across only a couple of ravens, and a valuable fur-bearing animal may also come across. The main thing is not a fox. Others are snipers who carefully select the place from which the shot will be fired. In the first case, a successful composition is a matter of chance, in the second, sooner or later someone will fall into the chosen framework.
And what is better - wandering around the city in search of a plot or choosing a place and time, and waiting? Hard to tell. It all depends on what is happening around. I will explain. You decided to replenish your portfolio with photographs of the newlyweds, but everyone does not invite you to the wedding. Fine. We think, and where are these newlyweds found? In Moscow there are several places where you will definitely catch a couple of weddings on the weekend - the Patriarchal Bridge and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Tsaritsino, Kolomenskoye, GUM. Now we decide what kind of surroundings we need. Then it’s a matter of technology - we arrive at the place and select the shooting point - sooner or later, but the young will fall into our frame. The photographer will only have to press the button when a couple of honeymooners or the whole fun wedding will approach the point that we have chosen for shooting.
Patriarchal Bridge - Moscow - 2011 
The work of a wedding photographer - 2011, Moscow What is best suited for shooting - open space, highway or brick walls around. This is absolutely unimportant.
Some people think street photography is zero processing and no cropping. In my opinion, this is wrong. You can crop a photo, and sometimes you need to. There is a plot in good street photography. Let not invented and not directed, but the plot is present anyway. Life itself gives stories for our shots. And there is nothing wrong with the fact that we cut off the excess, which does not fit into our plot. The main thing is not to cut off something important that emasculates our photo and makes it faceless.
Street photography - good shots for you That's all for today. Thoughts are over. But this is not the end, but only the beginning and the continuation follows.
Ilya Shtutsa is not just a talented street photographer. Photography for him is a way of interacting with the world, a kind of game, the rules of which he gladly shares.
A few years ago, when I just discovered street photography for myself, and at the same time photography in general (school experiments with Smena 8m, apparently, can’t be taken seriously as a photographic experience, there was no awareness there, moreover, after I abandoned “ shift ”, there was a break, no less than 20 years), I happened to be among the participants of one of the photo quests in Vladivostok, just at the moment when they were given tasks. The tasks were quite diverse, 12, it seems, to those, one of which was the “looking glass”.
It would seem simpler - open your eyes wider and go to the city, seize the moment and bring a great shot. But ... almost all of these people chose to make a production shot. And for this, they had to wildly wander - I heard the conversation of participants who were going to buy ice cream chicken, put it in the toilet, light it up in red and do some more strange manipulations, I don’t remember the details anymore - and all this instead of just going and looking, that on the existing request will offer an expensive universe.
Actually, the main thrill of street photography is precisely that it is an extremely exciting game for two players - a photographer and ... the world? Cities? Environment? The easiest way, of course, is to say that the game goes in peace, and it goes on an equal footing - if you with wide open eyes go out into the city like in an enchanted forest, knowing for sure that unknown miracles are waiting for you around the world, then this world will show miracles.
This sounds like a fairy tale, but the very principle of street photography is best expressed just ... a line from a Russian folk tale - "go there, I don’t know where, bring it, I don’t know what." You can, for example, tell the story of a photograph in which a cardboard box with legs chases a runaway girl.
I am often asked if this is a production. No, of course, no staging. The case took place in Blagoveshchensk-on-Amur, in June, there was forty degrees of heat, I was returning home at night and suddenly I saw a cardboard box near the bus stop, from which a cigarette light was peeking out of the window. Leaning down, I found a grimy physiognomy in the slot, and took a picture - with a flash, because it was very dark. Three guys ran to the flash from the darkness, and said - wait a minute, he will frighten the girls now, you take this off, it will turn out cool. I retreated into the darkness, and a couple of minutes later, when two unsuspecting girls were chatting blithely about something, the box quietly rose to its feet, ran up to them and began to push in the ass. The girls turned around, screeched, and rushed to their heels. Then the situation repeated itself with another passerby. After taking some photos, I asked the guys - why are you doing this? And I heard in response - and x ... still do, boring.
Of course, it’s not enough to see something interesting, you still need to be able to show it to others, that is, in fact, take a good photo. But here I will not discover any America, almost all good photographers advise the same thing - to shoot a lot and to select very carefully, ruthlessly rejecting 99 percent of the shot, and watch a lot of other people's good photos. Start from the Magnum website, for example. By the way, it’s better not to limit oneself to photographs, it’s also useful to go to museums, watch good movies and generally educate yourself in visual literacy. But these are all common truths.
The “go there, I don’t know where” mentioned above is an ideal instruction for a street photographer. Ideal, but, of course, far from the only possible one. Of course, it’s great to just roam the street carelessly in search of a unique and impressive moment, relying solely on your scent, but to shoot something on a given topic is very useful, at least as an exercise.
For example, I was very lucky three years ago (that is, at the very beginning practically) to find and connect to the Street Photography Now Project. This project was launched in mid-2010 by the London Photographers Gallery, along with Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now, which almost immediately after the release of the Bible for a new generation of street photographers. During the year, 52 well-known photographers, for example, Alex Webb and Bruce Gilden from the Magnum agency, Matt Stewart and other members of the In-public team, and others gave every week some kind of instruction that everyone could try to follow by simply downloading their a photo taken during this week in the appropriate group on the Flickr photo hosting.
Why am I saying I'm lucky? Firstly, it was, in fact, a free one-year course of street photography from the best masters of the genre, and sometimes the authors of the instructions actively commented on the work of the participants - what else can a beginner dream of? It is also important here that since about 500 people took part in the project, their common intention to fulfill the next instruction created a stream of enormous power, which greatly facilitates the task. For example, my photograph of women rolling a piece of a tree trunk along the street was taken in response to Gary Alexander's instruction “Surrealism Today.”
I then had a particularly busy week, there was absolutely no time to wander around the city with a camera, and I was able to allocate only three hours to complete the instructions. That is, in three hours I had to go and find some kind of surrealistic scene. The task seemed impossible, but I was sure that something would turn up - and now, having wandered for two hours in vain, I turned into the next lane and saw it.
Secondly, a regular community has been formed from regular participants in the project. These people did not want to stop the game after the official end of the project - and continued it on their own for the second, and then the third year! The only difference is that it is now called Street Photography Now Community and instructions are given half as often, which is why the stream is somewhat relaxed, but not critical. A side effect of the continuation of the project was, in particular, the creation of an international team of street photographers Observecollective.
Photographers who lived in the digital era, never dreamed of. The Internet offers incredible opportunities for extremely fast learning, but this also has a flip side (there are no free cakes - I liked to repeat my head of department at the institute). When thousands of pictures flash in front of your eyes every day, you quickly begin to realize that most of them operate a fairly small set of the same stamps.
This also applies to your own photographs - something that until recently seemed like a good find suddenly turns out to be another stamp, dragged to you by hundreds, if not thousands of people from all over the world. What to do if I ran into this wall? There is no definite answer to this question, but I think that you just need to continue taking pictures, catching the buzz from the process itself (otherwise why is it all?), Perhaps putting pictures off for a while, to return to them later with a fresh look. One of the instructions of the above-mentioned SPNP project, which was given to the participants by the wonderful Indian photographer Ragu Rei, sounded something like this: “Until the supernatural comes into play, the picture remains just information.” This means that a good photograph must have some kind of magic.
It's hard to explain, but sometimes something happens, some kind of click, and something passes through you, breaking the cage of clichés and mental constructions. Strictly speaking, such pictures cannot even be called their own, they were donated by some forces that are larger than us, and the one who held the camera in his hands is here at best a co-author. But only it is they, by and large, that matter.
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