The unobserved - Street pics

JemRaid

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Hello all

Some years ago the photo press and the social media were concerned that street photography might be banned in the EU. They asked photographers to go out and do it!

I went off to some of the small towns nearby with my little LX3. After fiddling about unsuccessfully for an hour or so I realised that I had the be fast if I was going to get anything at all, I did not want pics of peoples backs.

These are the settings I used; 28mm (which meant getting close) manual zone focussing anything from 3ft to about 30ft at f4.0, and altered the EV depending if I was walking into or out of the light.

I held the camera under my chin with my finger on the shutter, felt a right idiot doing it but I was able to use it, swivel it, swivel with it and press the shutter straightaway. I couldn't careless about getting stuff square its the people I was after.

AU05.jpg


After a few weeks of doing it I started to look through the pics for a theme or even a project. Nothing came to mind immediately until I turned it on its head and thought about what I was not taking. And that was pics of old people, dreadful really I'm an old fogie myself. I had my theme and decided to call it; The Unobserved.

There is I think a deal of pathos about this one.

J
 
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I'm a firm believer in follow the leader on assignments like that. So what exactly is Street Photography? Quicky snapshot isn't the job. It's knowing and understanding the culture and telling a story about it. One of my favorite photographers was Helen Levitt. She passed away, in her sleep, a month or so ago. It's a story telling process and NOT snapshots on the street.

It's about telling us who we are. Lots of personality in good street photography. There's a fine line between the invasion of privacy and honest good story telling. Most street photography specialize in Gotcha snaps. Many if not most photographers like Helen are asking permission all the time.
 
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Hello Joe,

You are quite right, the whole sequence of these images become a photo essay and a handbound photo book and was published on F. Stop magazine. Please do keep watching for further posts. May I suggest with great respect that you have a go yourself a/. without anyone realising it and b/. from 4 or 5ft away.

Cheers and good luck - J
 
As a former news photographer I worked at it. We never wanted to publish or show people with a surprise. It's not necessary to be sneaky.
 
Dear Joe,

One does see lots of street pics that ridicule people, I abhor those and would never do it. I did get spotted a few times and when I explained that I was photographing people whom most ignore they said; "Good for you, we know we are invisible, but we just carry on". Perhaps now you will begin to see the value of it.

Cheers - J
 
I believe this one shows compassion, something that's missing from lots of old peoples lives.

AU04.jpg


Cheers - J
 
I think your theme is a good one and it would be really good to see 20 or 30 years in the future your results from today.
 
I prefer the unobserved view, as I tend to get wrapped up in the back story of the subjects. Two people sitting on a bench talking......are they lovers, family, friends, foes, conspirators, strangers???? Sometimes even without hearing the conversation it's possible to ascertain part of the story and sometimes I'm sure the story concocted in my mind isn't even close. The advantage of the K1ii is the swivel screen on the back. I can sit it comfortably on my lap or on a table, compose, focus, and snap the shutter without much notice. What I'm not in favor of is disturbing the lives of the people I photograph, or the shove a camera in your face approach.
 
Hello Derrel,

Many thanks for that I do hope that it has done some good in the past and will continue to do so.

Hello Smoke665,

Thanks for your comment your's is a very good way of approaching the genre. I on the other hand had already got a theme and it did turn into a project.

I concur about sticking a camera in front of peoples noses HCB fashion. One must do it without the subjects being aware of it. On the occasions when I was spotted I always offered to show them the pics, explain and also offered to delete the image. I kept the towns anonymous no one would know exactly which ones they were.

I also follow the guidelines of the Church of England which ask photographers not to photograph anyone they deem to be under 18. For they might be under witness protection or in fear of an abusive parent. Sadly one does see lots of children photographed in the street by photographers unaware of the possible consequences.

The whole thing is a minefield after this one project I went on to teaching myself how to make montages.

Cheers - J
 
I found that by looking the other way to the camera and pressing the shutter, I could get really close, some old people are adamant and very strong, that's what attracted me to this couple. No cropping or straightening this is the full frame.

AU02.jpg

J
 
I was spotted as you can see, showed them the pic, explained and they said keep at it.

AU03.jpg

J
 
Thank you Jon that's really nice of you, I do appreciate it. Cheers - J
 
A couple questions on your project. In your OP you described your shooting method which would make composure, focus and exposure setting difficult, yet your posted images suffer little from deficiencies in any of these areas. Would you mind giving a little more detail on your settings?

Also, do you only do B&W and if so why?
 
Hello smoke665,

Thanks for the interesting questions, the composure comes from getting used to having the camera under my chin and sensing that it is level, it doesn't work that well when I turned my shoulders e.g. turning to the right meant that my right hand went down a bit giving the verticals a tilt and is amplified by using the 28mm setting.

I preset the focus, it's called 'zone focussing' when set on manual a DOF scale appears and I adjusted the aperture and focus to give me about 3 or 4 ft to 30 ft in focus, I was then able to forget about that.

The exposure was set at AF single and when walking into the light I used a +EV setting if it was very bright it might be +1.2/3rds EV and and vice versa with the light behind me, every time I changed direction I altered it. It doesn't work everytime but a lot is retrievable in Ps, I used JPEG's and XNView to open my images into Ps.

I come from the film/darkroom era and made my own 4x5 camera at one point, I've been a partial fan of HCB, I adore Andre Kertesz's work, love Anne Brigman and admire Minor White, black and white seemed to be the 'right' thing to do with this project.

Cheers and thanks,

J
 

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