Street Confidence

Firstly I'm know expert but I believe in sharing knowledge, ideas and views, that way we can learn from each other at whatever level we are at.

The fascinating thing about photography is that there's so many different forms or areas we can cover, anything from still photography, sports, wildlife and street photography as just some to mention. For me I've not found one area that I prefer over another, maybe because I'm doing it more as a hobby that I'm looking to take the one step further in doing a foundation degree in professional photography which is over three years as a part time course and I hope that maybe it will give me a step up in the world of photography, if not then I will at least have a lot more under my belt to do photography in what ever way it comes.

My personal view is that when you get into photography, you start to see the world around you in a different way. For that photograph you see an image in your head of how you would like to see it as a print or a visual aid on a screen. Soon as you put that viewfinder to your eye you begin to move the focal length and angle of the camera to the point that you decide to press that button. If your like me or others your change the angle and camera view so many times that you end up taking maybe 5, 10 or more images of the same thing. Its not till you get home and you load them onto your PC and scan through them all, you start to weed out the ones that for what ever reason you feel don't work and your left with maybe 2 or 3 that has something for you to work on.

Then the work begins as you decide in what form the image is to be in its colour range, this could be anything from B&W, tinted, HDR or just colour, what ever comes into your head may again change so many times which is the great thing about digital is that you can make as many copies as you want to try different effects until you have the final image that your happy with.

Some forms of photography don't involve people, children, animals which are probably some of the hardest things to photograph as they don't always do what you when you want. Then there's photography that involves people, children and animals that are in the environment of the street.

Have you ever herd of the term people watching? You can sit on on one of those benches that I reckon is put there for the population to take the weight off their feet while their better half is busy in the shop and could be there for some time. 

If you sit there and watch the people that go pass you or are in the foreground doing something which could be just looking at something in a window or in their view that as an image would be an interesting subject. People, children and animals can do the funniest or interesting things from the point of view as a photographic image to be captured. Their looks or mannerisms can be captivating and it doesn't have to be just a single person, it could be a group of people and you just wished you had your camera to capture it.

Today we live in a world of images, why, because everyone has a camera on them that capture stills and video, this is how most of the social websites have grasped on to the fact and want people to have their devices in their hands at all times to get that image and load it up on there social network. Sadly something's are captured that can be devastating and upsetting with the initial view, but that can be used as a positive to help protect us from things or people that cause such things to happen that we sadly caught on our devices. This has only come about in the what last 6-7 years with the devices and social networks being as good as they are.

When someone holds up a mobile phone to take pictures, nobody really takes much notice, someone with a DSLR in there hands do stand out if there in an area where they are the only one taking photos so it does attract attention and takes someone to so bold to do so. But if your in a place where tourist are in their swarms with their DSL's or DSLR's, nobody takes any notice, strange isn't it. But as practice to do street photography, its a great place to start and importantly build your confidence in taking photos of people, children and animals.

In three ours you can capture around about 170 or more images, that's plenty to work on for a three hour session. If you take the part of watching people and using your camera to capture those moments or interesting people, you can build up those all important skills.

A street has not just the tourist but the shoppers and the people on their way to work, or on a lunch break and those benches filled with with the people taking the weight off their feet that I mention earlier. So when you spot something you have to time yourself lifting viewfinder to your eye and being in the right focal length that's near enough and lastly nobody getting in the way of the you pressing that shutter.

What I've learnt is a few things to that you can do to get things ready to be able to capture that shot.

If you have a camera that you can adjust the viewfinder to give what's called eye relief which is where you can see the info that's around the edge of the view that you see while taking the photo. Most people close the other eye when there taking a photo, but you can adjust it so that you can have both eyes open. The advantage is that when you see the image you want to capture you can see in front of you things or people that might get in the way, you can time it so that you can view through the viewfinder and then see when then object or person is going to pass so you can get that image.

The other thing is playing with the focal length so that you know roughly what it will be if 25 feet away and say another point that's only 15 feet away. So again when you see an image, you can turn the focal length up as you bring the camera up to your eye, it helps safe time in trying to get that focal length almost there and saving lost of time.

Just these two things can help and does take practice which you can do at home or in the back garden or in a park.

To move up your game to not needing the tourist to kinda hide behind just needs you to be subtle in your approach. Going up to someone and asking if you can take the photo can seem a bit daunting but what's the worse they can, no, so you move on. If your taking photos and someone asks you what you photographing, then be up front and tell them your doing street photography, but you don't have to go into the whole technical side about it all, if there that interested let them google it.

As it stands in the UK we don't need permission to take photos and until that day changes we should snap away, but if they ever did and this goes for the rest of the world, how do you stop all those people that includes us from not taking photos, its un policeable.

I hope that maybe someone finds this useful if its a thing that they want to have ago at but has never been sure on how to go about it. There is some great and interesting people and moments out there waiting for you to capture, so have fun and get out there and have a go.

Thanks for reading, AndyD  

Vivian Maier The Unseen Photographer

This is my own personal tribute to a photographer that I think we all aspire to be as good as, I have no images to post with this or any writings, just my own personal thoughts after watching the BBC program called 'Vivian Maier: Took Nanny's Pictures?'

Firstly it's so sad that this wonderful lady never got to see how we the public that have had the chance to see some of her images have taken to her work as an amazing street photographer. Today we have the digital cameras and all the software to make our own works to stand out, she on the other hand would take some of her rolls of film to the local chemist that used to arrange the processing of images. Its seems like our world and her world have collided as her works that are still on negatives or even on rolls of films are being process by today's technology and post processed, I wonder how she would feel about that.

As we know that all her works were in boxes or suitcases that were in storage that she paid heavily to store all these items and then when she ran out of money the lockup buyers moved in and bought up these storage units with no idea what they had. What is so so sad is that all her work has been broken up and as the company that bought the storage units throw away her personal writings that probably hold the key to who Vivian really was and what she thought of the world around her. 

Its clear that she was very much a lonesome person even though she worked as a nanny and the children that she looked after as a nanny really don't seem to know much about her apart from her roll as their nanny and at times she took photos with her Roloflex camera.

The thoughts of today is that she spent most of her money on rolls of film and the Roloflex camera only took very few images but her hit rate with no miss shot photos was amazing when you see how hard it was to use the camera that she had. Those of us that have had ago at street photography know how fast pace the street world around us is and how you have to instinctively see the image before it happens, for her it was almost like she had a third eye and was extremely good at seeing the image before she took it.

With the images she captured that are close up, it would seem that she almost melted into the street as she was able to capture that natural look and was able to see the thoughts   that was going through the person mind as she was photographing them. She also had the talent to approach her characters to ask them to take their photo, she didn't have the untrusting thoughts of people as today's street photography has.

She was able to capture images of herself is so many mirrored ways that, but each one that I've seen she looks so stern and almost lost in a world that had so many different things going on with it. She seems to be in the right place at the right time, something today we wished we were able to do, but life was very different in her era and she showed the world of the streets from all sides from those that almost had nothing to those that had everything. Some of her characters could of seen her as an easy target to relieved her of her bag or camera to make a few bucks, but it seems that the people she approached saw her as no threat and was happy to be part of something, if only they knew what they would become in the images that Vivian captured.

Her skills too me was to see the world around her, to take a step back and actually look. The very fact that most of her work was B&W she was dependent on the shop she would take her rolls of film to, would do a good job that she would keep the images. We don't know if she was able to process her one rolls of film.

I think from what I've seen that she was a very private person, the fact that know one knew who she was or her work, it makes me think how would she feel knowing what has happen to her work, the fact that people are paying thousands of dollars for one picture that would of covered her rent for more than that month, that she could have had a comfortable life, specially in her last years of her life. At the end of the program one neighbour says that she looked like a bag lady,  is that how she wanted it to be, would she have been able to cope with the huge media attention that has grabbed the photographic community today, we will never know and maybe that's a good thing.

Now that we know of and her work, is it fare that those that have parts of it that they bought for a couple of hundred bucks should hold onto it and make their money from her silent and unpaid for work. Would it not be better to be put in a museum so that the world can see for free as she did in taking the images in the first place, she asked for nothing and got noting but the sole of the images that she captured over her lifetime.

Thank you Vivian Maier for being the person you were and bless you for capturing a world that many of us aspire to be able to do in our own lifetime as growing photographers that like you started with the minimal of equipment and have learnt so much from your personal images over your lifetime.  

Thank you for reading, AndyD