Try at Street photography

abhishekdg · Jul 19, 2012

Hi friends,

My second try at street photography continues. However, i still feel i keep on loosing interesting people on the streets. And truely speaking a little apprehensive about banging the camera onto the face to take a close up shot. Often got asked by people which seems quite embarassing to the truest sense. I just can't ignore them as you should do so wanna know your experience.Also C&C these pictures.

35mm4me · Jul 19, 2012

Street scenes are hard. The goal is to not be seen with agiant camera attached to you face.

abhishekdg · Jul 19, 2012

Yeah that's the whole point of it.And with a beefy DSLR like D90 its quite hard not to be seen.This is where leica and olympus win the race .But alas!! I am too poor to afford another mirrorless for my hobby

LizardKing · Jul 20, 2012

First of all, I have to think you like these photos or are the best of the shooting, otherwise don't really see the point of uploading these for critique... But in this case I'm not really sure about it, so I have to ask... do you honestly like these pictures? Think for a second they're not yours and try to be objective.

Anyway, C&C per request:

1) 40-50% of the frame is an OOF boy and in the foreground, don't really see the point of that. Woman, which I assume is the main subject is missing a foot and not in good focus.
2) 50-60% of the frame is an OOF wall in the foreground, then you have a floating leg coming in there, really bad reflections on the glass... and also the subject doesn't seem to be interesting (to me at least)
3) Subject is kinda centered and too small, composition is boring and the subject seems to be staring at the camera.

Please don't take it the wrong way, since if I take the time to write all this is only to try and help you improve your photos. I'd suggest read a little bit about how to improve composition, pay more attention to your subject and try to keep distracting objects out of the frame, and finally be a little more objective when criticizing your work. IMHO these photos should have been deleted on camera or when you first downloaded them to a PC.

edit: maybe instead of going around looking for interesting people, look for interesting locations or backgrounds and then wait around there for someone interesting to appear... that'll give you time to think the shot and do it better. It doesn't matter it's not the most interesting subject (aside these are not particular interesting anyway), as long as you can use them for practice :thumbup:

amolitor · Jul 20, 2012

If you're trying to do "street" photography, you're looking not so much for interesting people, but interesting images. Geometry and composition, combined with an enigmatic unfolding scene. The scene doesn't have to be mysterious to YOU, only when it's put in the camera, really.

The first one has the germ of an idea, with the tree behind and the walking woman, you get a repeated shape, which is just the sort of coincidence of geometry we're looking for. There isn't much sense of mystery here, although you do create a little with the boy in the foreground giving a sort of voyeuristic effect. If there something we're missing about the girl, maybe? I don't care about the cut off foot, but I do care that the composition isn't terribly strong. Vertical might be harder to work with in "street"

I kind of like the wall in #2, it's a bold compositional element. It's altogether clear that you're hiding, though. With two of these in a row, we become aware of the photographer, and the fact that the photographer is hiding behind things. Compositionally strong, but I see no particular accidents of geometry that make this work visually, and there's no real scene here.

#3 is pretty much nothing, unfortunately.

I would read a few things:

On Street Photography

Street photography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and if you can find a copy somewhere, Henri Cartier-Bresson's forward to his book The Decisive Moment, which also appears in a book of his essays called The Mind's Eye.

Street isn't really about interesting people, it's about interesting (visually, emotionally, mentally) moments.

abhishekdg · Jul 20, 2012

Thank you so much Lizardking and amolitor for the detailed lovely reviews. Now I can truely understand whats going wrong in my street photos. May be will try out again this weekend. but thanks for the detailed bold explanation.