Any group of more than 3 is hard to shoot...

[sashbar]

... especially if it is a group of 13 ... who are not really liked to be photographed by a stranger... who can not possibly explain to them that he is not interested in any one of them in the slightest... and is purely after colours, lines, and a bit of depth...

 

[fjrabon]

I think the biggest issue here is the massing. They're all clumped together and the eyelines all concentrate to roughly the same area, which is covered up and not of real interest.

 

[The_Traveler]

there might have been a composition here but this isn't it.
It's just a jumble with no emphasis on anything in particular.

 

[Designer]

I see repeating colors, lines and shapes, but overall it lacks punch.

 

[Dave442]

Lots of backs to the camera and the only ones facing the camera are on their cell phone. The girl with her hands in the air and the boy pulling his ear add a bit as does the girl on the right sort of looking in on the group. And the reflection of the yellow house in the window. So from the girl with the hands up to the right works for me a bit.

 

[Gary A.]

I like the colors ... but color will only take you so far.

 

[sashbar]

Thanks guys, I agree with most comments. I have posted it as a failed attempt to capture a large group which is sooo difficult to shoot, because what we need first and foremost here is separation of objects.

The group vas very colourful and there was also that yellow lighting that complemented the yellow trousers brilliantly. The whole setting was good. So it was worth for any street shooter to stop and try at least several shots. I took probably 6 or 7 , but could not stand there any more without making them feel awkward.

They were moving all the time, and my best shot (this one) came up half-baked to say the least.

As for the composition, there is an obvious emphasis - the boy in yellow trousers, its head is well placed on a nice contrasting background and his arms suggest some diagonal movement and give us the line of vision, he is pointing to the girl whose pose is also dynamic and contrasting with others. So we are OK up to this point. What happens after that, of course is a mess. We have these dreaded mobile phones, peoples backs and body parts. Sometimes a person that is not fully separated looks ok, but not here of course. There are some other nice formal elements in this image that I will not talk about simply because they stay formal and are not translated into a real visual impact, if you know what i mean.

As I pointed in my original post, I was not interested in what they were doing, in any stories etc, I was not even interested in interaction, because if noone interacted with others here and stood on his/her own, that would be a perfect storm of such a composition. I had to be seriously lucky to catch that. So I was purely interested in colours and shapes. Colours were OK, as Gary pointed, but shapes led me nowhere.

I have this idea about complex street compositions that look like chaos to an untrained eye but make some jaw dropping images. ( Not the above one ) Some Alex Webb images are good examples of that. It looks like chaos but somehow is very appealing, and you feel there is an order here. And we are not talking about shifted emphasis and other bended rules, it just looks chaotic but good. My theory (that I am still not fully convinced about) is that chaos here is actually nothing else but several perfect compositions superimposed in one image. I do not think guys like Webb see it and do it consciously, but they feel it naturally and instinctively react to these "superimposed compositions".

I just wanted to share my thought process behind these kinds of shots, hope it helps.