STREET PHOTOGRAPHY & THE HUMAN ELEMENT
Street photography involves people - the Human Element. It is about people, what they look like, what they do, what they feel. So the first rule that I never break is to show them the outmost respect. "We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being (Henri Cartier-Bresson)." Thus I never photograph people in situations that might be embarrassing to them.
There is also this thing with children nowadays. And this tendency to go into hysterics when someone is photographed in a public space doesn't help either. The photographer is seen more often than not as the bad guy. So some things are off limits. No embarrassing situations, no recognizable children. No photographing obviously dangerous people, e.g., members of a street gang, riot police officers etc. It is experience that makes it easier to judge what is on and what is off. Taking all these matters into account one has to blend-in, to be there and not to be there, to be a 'chameleon'.
GEAR & TECHNIQUE
I always prepare when I plan to go out for a street photography tour. When I go to an unfamiliar place I do some research online. I study the map, look at pictures on the Web, and read about the place. Then I choose my gear that is one or more lenses. I use a full frame DSLR camera (Pentax K1ii) and prime lenses. These are all manual focus vintage lenses. I have amassed over 45 lenses so I am spoilt for choice. Earlier I used to rely on tele-lenses but nowadays I rarely use them and if I do nothing longer than 100 mm. I always have a normal lens (50 mm or 55 mm lens) with me. With such a lens I can do anything. I also take a couple of wide angle lenses, one 35 mm and a wider one, something between 20 mm and 28 mm. I even use a fish eye lens sometimes. A full kit would be 4 lenses: 20 mm, 28 mm, 50 mm and 85 mm, or 24 mm, 35 mm, 55 mm and 90 mm. But more often than not a settle for just 3 lenses leaving the short tele-lens behind. Having 3 lenses in the bag does not necessarily mean that I'll use them all or that I constantly change lenses. It can well be that I use just one. So why not use a zoom lens? The answer is easy. A zoom lens makes you lazy - a prime lens makes you plan and think. And this leads to better composition. Prime lenses, especially the vintage normal and wide angle lenses I use, are also smaller and less conspicuous. Remember, you have to be unremarkable and a large zoom lens will frighten people more often than not. A small normal or wide angle prime lens on the other hand is no 'threat'. Most people don't take them seriously. They might even regard them as ridiculous - how can a serious photographer shoot with such an unremarkable lens when so many people use these long tubes nowadays? Another often overlooked point is that prime lenses deliver better image quality. Why vintage lenses? Well, I have grown up with these lenses. I can't like a lens without an aperture ring. Besides, older glass has excellent optical quality and is much cheaper than modern lenses of comparable quality. And there is not this monstrous contrast of modern lenses that can't be corrected whatever you do in post-processing. I shoot all my pics as RAW files. So if I manage to expose correctly I can adjust everything in post-processing. I don't use any filters nor do I use flash. Only available light. That's more than enough for street photography.
With my gear packed I am ready to go 'hunting'. There are two basic approaches here. Either I walk round and about looking and observing or I seat comfortably on a bench or similar and wait for something to materialize. In any case there are two prerequisites: First of all you must have a clear head. Sometimes I catch myself shooting without thinking. Just for the sake of pressing the shutter button. That won't do. When I realize this I just turn off the camera. The second prerequisite is that you have to observe, just looking won't do the trick. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear." Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes' phrase summarizes this very accurately. Then there is the matter of feeling. As André Kertész correctly put it "Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph." Everybody sees the same things but each person feels more or less different about these same things. As a result one can expect two photographers to produce two different pictures of the same object. If I don't feel anything about something I won't photograph it. If my feelings are strong I know that I will take a great picture.
To quote Bruce Gilden: "I love the people I photograph. I mean, they're my friends. I've never met most of them or I don't know them at all, yet through my images I live with them." I also love the people I photograph. So I will feel with them, I can feel their joy, their sorrow, their boredom, all their emotions. And my goal is to "shed some light on those people who are never in the limelight" (Robert Doisneau). I often talk to the people I want to photograph on the street. That way we establish a relationship, a fleeting but fruitful one. We first talk and then talk some more, and sometimes it gets very brotherly and then I ask if a can take a picture. Not long ago I met an elderly invalid gentleman feeding stray cats. He was confined to a wheelchair and the scene was quite moving. I asked him if I may photograph him. He was surprised and very politely declined. Nevertheless I thanked him and went on but then he called me back and told me the story of how he went around every day feeding over 100 stray cats. And then he asked me to photograph him with his cat friends. These are most satisfying moments if you like me are interested in the true humanist street photography genre.
But let us be frank. Most street images are 'stolen moments'. That means that the subject is unaware of my presence even when I stand no more than a few meters away. How to do that? A definite rule is not to alert your subject by moving suddenly and noisily. A nice trick is to act like a tourist. Tourists are forgiven almost anything. And I must be prepared. This is another must. Especially for me since I use manual focus lenses and manual mode on the camera. That means that I have to have set the aperture and have done a rough light metering beforehand. I use a wrist grip on my camera so I can hold the camera by my leg and only raise it to frame and focus for a few fragments of time. Another technique is to shoot from the hip. This is easily done when using auto-focus lenses but with manual focus it entails a lot of prior thinking and planning. First of all I set a rather small aperture (f5.6 - f7.1) to ensure a large enough depth of field (DOF). Then comes a rough light metering and either stop-down if needed or an underexposure if that's my intent and/or an adjustment of the ISO value and then I am ready to start my approach of the subject. I keep the camera low and hope for the best.
To quote Henri Cartier-Bresson: "Of course it’s all luck."
Well, not all but most of it.
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