Going Candid...
Page 4
An easy way to shoot
In the end, people will think you are a tourist, shooting a public transport vehicle. So they might not worry at all. You should not worry as well, as you just shoot a public transport vehicle as you are a fan of buses. Actually I met a guy in Edinburgh who loved to shoot buses. I'm more into people riding buses, as you can see in my photos...
P.S. This also works very well in restaurants, cafés and so on...
3 Ways to Shoot
The Unnoticed Way
You can shoot street photography while people don’t take any notice of you.
This might be the best way in order not to influence their reaction. People would act as they normally do as they have not seen you with the camera. A disadvantage might be that they will not look into your camera. I normally like when people look into my camera as this gives a certain connection; it’s a way of communication with the person in the street and me the photographer.
There are situations when this look is not necessary and when it’s perfectly fi-ne.
The Surprise Way
Another possibility to shoot people in the streets would be the surprise. You just point the camera to someone and press the shutter release button. The person sees you and realizes that you take photos of him. The reaction of this kind of photos might be different, not natural or even shocked. A lot of people don’t like to be photographed and you can see this from their reaction. I prefer this kind of shooting in the streets, as it somehow shows the reality. I’m aware that some people might look astonished, angry, shocked or how you would call it. But this is the challenge, when you do candid portraits.
The Asked Way
And last but not least you can always ask someone to take his photo. I never do that or only in very rare moments. The most difficult thing is that you have to get a natural look of this posed moment. When you don’t know this person, you don’t know how he looks in a natural way. If you are not used to street photography and if you are afraid of the reaction of the person, this might be the best way to start off. It also helps you growing your social skills of talking people into something. You may even get a lot of information about a person you didn’t expect, but which could be interesting.
The Law
What is right and what is wrong?
There is always a huge discussion going on about my candid portraits. I know that it might be difficult from a law perspective; I know that there is a right on personality. But on the other hand I don’t want to make posed photos. That’s not street photography anymore. The same opinion I have regarding asking afterwards. For me this is too much effort and will not lead to success.
I’m not a lawyer
I couldn’t really find an
article yet, which shows,
what will happen, if
someone finds his photo
on Flickr. We do this for
the sake of art and not to
disrespect somebody. Of-
ten people are just actors
on a street photo and it
could be anyone acting
like it. People would be
interchangeable, but not
replaceable. There must
be humans in the photo,
so I have to shoot them.
Without them, it would
be boring.
Stay on the safe side…
If you want to be on the safe side, you have to stop shooting or at least stop publishing photos of strangers on the Internet. But this is something I would never do. It is your personal choice if you want to live with the fact that you do something which might be against the law. Or you find a way that makes it compliant with the law. Shoot only people you won’t recognize on the photo and so on. Read the next chapter about legal street photography.
…or don’t care at all.
You cannot really do good and effective street photography by following the law by 100%. You either go candid and forget the law or you follow the law and lose the spirit of street photography. This is my personal opinion. Everyone has to figure this out for himself and do what he is comfortable with. I don’t suggest doing this; I just tell you how I do it. It must be right for you.
Legalize it
How to legalize street photography...
A lot of people have problems shooting people in the streets. They are afraid of the law in their country and this is hindering them to go out and point their camera towards someone. There are some simple ways to get around this issue. Here are some suggestions:
Don't shoot portraits
The main thing with the law is that people should not be recognized on a photo you want to publish. You try to keep your camera away from a person’s head. You now think this is boring. It's not. Look at the example on this page.
When I look through my photos, there are many compliant photos in my photo stream.
Shoot against the light
I once wrote "If you want to see
faces, have the light in your back.
If you want to see forms, have the
light in your front." You can make
silhouettes against the light to
prevent people from recognizing
themselves. This is actually a very
nice technique which gives you
wonderful photos which are fully
compliant.
Shoot people from behind
This sounds a bit weird and you
may think that this doesn't really
give a good shot. Just look at the
next two photos to see what I
mean.
Motion blurs people
You can also hide someone’s personality by blurring him. With a longer shutter speed, moving people will blur and will not be recognized anymore.
Shoot dogs
I know some people might smile now. But why don’t you just try shooting dogs in the streets. It's an easy target and from a law perspective you can get a compliant shot. You will then be the first "Dog Street Photographer" and there might be some potential to get famous. I mean this and I'm totally serious. It would give a good series to start with. Just consider doing different things at the beginning to get people’s attention.
Shoot at public events
In Europe you can shoot an-
yone who participates in a
public event like a parade,
demonstration, carnival or
public party. Not only are
the people in the parade,
but also the spectators in-
cluded in this rule. So there
you have enough possibili-
ties to shoot some people
straight into their faces. You
can even be part of the hap-
pening, being dressed up
and just shoot random peo-
ple. Another tip: Just be
there one hour before it
starts and you will see a lot
of people preparing and do-
ing things you might not see
every day (like dressing up,
etc.)
Ask the person afterwards
I would not ask someone upfront, as it will change the look of a person. You may take the shot and talk to the person afterwards. If you really want to be sure that he agrees, you have to have a model release signed off. There are such contracts available for the iPhone/iPad (look for EasyRelease) which makes the handling much easier (they sign with their finger). With this practice you have bullet proof evidence that you can use and publish the photo.
But remember one thing
Don't think that you can setup a street photo. That is not the meaning and this is not right. In my opinion this is even worse than breaking the law by publishing a stranger’s photo. So don't even think about it.
The conclusion
There are enough examples
to show you that there are
legal ways to street photog-
raphy.
If you still don't go
out to shoot in the streets,
you are a wimp. Stop using
the law as a reason why you
don't go out to the streets to
make interesting photos.
Anyone can do it and there
is nothing illegal about it,
when you do it the right
way.
Ethics
Introduction
When I saw this man (next page) running on 5th Avenue in New York City, I was quickly thinking if it would be appropriate to make a photo of a man not having any legs. I decided to take it because there is the fact that this is a sad thing but also that there is high tech giving these people a life back. Furthermore it's showing what happens out in the world and how diverse humanity can be.
"Life is not wearing make-up, it's unadorned." - Thomas Leuthard
There are a lot of people thinking of not taking a photo of certain situations or people. It's all your decision about what you shoot and what you don't. You have to be comfortable with the situation. If you don't like what you see, look away. For me it's important that I show life exactly as it happens. No setup, no asking, no posing, nothing. Just look around and shoot what you see...
As street photography lives from the things you don't see all the time, maybe some people think it is a kind of attraction. I don't think so. It is just showing life as it is. For me street photography is a way of photo journalism. You document everyday life on the street. Whatever happens, you document it, no matter what it is.
You should not focus on beggars as they are an easy target. That is not how it works. You should show the reality, contrasts, how life is happening. There are people lying on the streets and others are just passing by looking away. If you have problems shooting things which might not be ethical, then you can also ask upfront. You can also shoot a person in a way you won't see the face by lowering the camera to the floor. This makes the photo very interesting and you can have it in an ethical way.
In my opinion there are no ethics in street photography. You are the person who decides to take the shot or not. If you don’t take it, someone else will.
Rocking Flickr
Introduction
Flickr is still the most commonly used platform/community for photos these days. Although there are a lot of good photographers moving over to 500px, I still believe that Flickr has the potential to show your work to the world. The first thing on Flickr is a Pro account, if you can afford it. If not, use the free version until you can afford it. It's a $25 dollar investment for one year. It shows others that you are serious about your photography and that you really use Flickr as a professional tool. You will have a lot of advantages using a pro account, like the stats feature.
A solid photo stream
The first step is always to
produce some good work.
Without good photos in your
Flickr photo stream you can-
not conquer the world.
Therefore you upload at
least 10-20 of your top
streets to your profile. Be-
fore you have achieved this,
you should not continue to
read this book. Or at least
skip the Flickr sections.
Many contacts
It's like in real life, the more you socialize, the better you get around. It's the same as on Facebook. You have more power with a lot of friends, no matter what you want to achieve. I have over 1’550 people following me so far while I follow the work of over 1'900 people (so 350 people don't like my work). I probably only know 5% of them. It's not important that you have met your contacts in person, it's more important that you like the same kind of photography. Don't add someone who doesn't have any street photo in his portfolio.
As you want to see only photos related to street in the "Photos of Your Contacts" stream. After you have uploaded your top streets, you search in Flickr for some good street photographers you like and add them to your contacts.
This person gets an email and might add you as well, depending on the contacts strategy this person follows. You can differ your contacts from your followers in the "Contact List" menu of Flickr.
Join many street photography groups
There are a lot of groups about street photography. Some groups have the word “Street Photography” in their names, some have different names. You should join them all or at least the big ones. But how do you find these groups. You can either search for them through the Flickr search or just look to which groups certain photos of your contacts belong to. Especially with the non-obvious named groups this helps a lot. There are some good groups not called street photography at all.
Make a Top 50 set
Nothing worse than you
open a Flickr profile and
you have to search for
the top photos of this
person.
Therefore
I
highly suggest creating a
"Top 50" set which you
place at the top of your
sets. This can be auto-
mated with a service
from Dopiaza based on interestingness. This set
is being updated about
once a day. Check out
my Flickr Photostream
to see, how it works.
There are also sites like
Flickriver which do the same, but I don't want
to switch pages, while
surfing on Flickr. Your
contacts should have it
as easy as possible to
find your masterpieces.
Upload them continuously
Try not to overload your Flickr account and your contacts by uploading a lot of photos at once. Keep the upload stream low and upload just 1-2 photos a day.
You may upload one in the morning and one in the evening. Like this your photos get the biggest attention. Depending on your location you may upload your photos at the time when the biggest Flickr crowd (probably the USA) is getting up in the morning. You may also change the time when you upload and figure out when it's best to do so. The point of time, when you upload a photo, is very important.
Geo-tag your photos
Flickr has a feature to tag the location of your photos. Just make a use of it.
Especially when you search in a certain area like a city you visit, you may want to find the good spots for street photography or find some good photographers who are in that city very often to shoot their photos. With the map and the view option you can really find a lot of good photos.
Tag your photos
A lot of marketing people search in Flickr for photos they want to use for different publications. The better you tag your photos, the higher the chances are that they find your photos. You can have up to 75 tags per photo as a Pro user. Use this feature as it is quite handy. You can also mass tag your photos in "Organize & Create" which is even easier. Please don't use tags which don't apply to your photos just to get attention. It's about marketing, not about spamming.
Add your photos to groups
With a pro account, you can add your photos to 60 groups (10 on a free account) in Flickr. Use this option to get your photos visible to a big audience.
First of all you have to join a group, before you can add photos. It's important that you only post photos to groups related to street photography or at least about what is visible on your photo. I have posted my shoes also in the "Foot Fetish" and "High Heels" group just to be sure that these people have also something from my photos. Since nobody complained so far, I guess it is fine.
Re-add your photos to groups
Maybe this is a bit a spammer's
approach, but you can re-add
your photos to the groups of
your choice after a certain time.
Especially to get good photos
even more seen. There are so
many photos in certain groups
recognized. Therefore you just
re-add them one week later
again to certain groups. Delete it
first and then add it again. Sorry,
this is working and sometimes
you should use this feature, just
to re-promote some of your best
photos from time to time.
Share uploaded photos
In Flickr you can share your photos with your Twitter and Facebook contacts just with 2 clicks. Use this feature as not everybody is on Flickr the whole day.
In Facebook they may see your posts and will look at, comment and fave your photo. This might be another resource to bring traffic to your photo stream.
On Twitter they may get re-tweeted and then you get even more attention.
The Flickr Explore
There is the Explore feature in Flickr where the best 500 photos per day are visible. This is a bit of a black box to me and I'm not sure, how you get listed there. It's a combination of views, comments and favorites, combined with the amount of groups a photo is in. If you want to get listed on Explore, you may have to follow another strategy than adding it to as many groups as possible. There is a service called Scout from BigHugeLabs where you can see, if you were ever listed on the Explore page of Flickr. I will talk about this feature in detail in the next chapter.
Write comments and favorite other photos
In order to get some attention on Flickr you also have to contribute some text to it. You cannot just upload photos and wait for the people to see and comment them. You have to do the same on other people's photos. It's important to give feedback to others. This helps you improving your eyes and you will realize that your view will change over time. The more you comment and favorite on non-contacts, the more people might look at your work. It's as simple as that…
Find good street photographers
Good searching skills are 75% of my job as an IT support guy. The same is valid on Flickr. You can either look through the photos of your contacts or you just browse through the photos on Explore. Another option is to search actively for key words like "Street Photography" and then sort by "Interesting". If you get too many of one photographer (e.g. Felix Lupa), just exclude him with