02-24-10 – On the Streets

Anybody? Bueller?

ZOMG! can I donate for his new kidney?

heh. I freaking love that movie. We introduced the boy to it recently too along with a few other movies from the area.
/I’d forgotten that Sixteen Candles has 15 seconds or so of completely gratuitous boobies though 😛

ANd thanks. I don’t think it violates the intent of the difficulty, but wasn’t sure about what was meant by the letter of it.

Cool. Thanks Corsec. I kinda figured that’s what you were going for.

FWIW that one is uncropped, shot from around 10″ away…

/not sure I’m going to use it still – I’ve got a ton of shots for this contest 😛

How unposed do the shots have to be? If I want to get close to someone with a wide-angle, they often start posing for it. How “candid” does the shot have to be?
Also, this may be a silly question, but is the environment limited to “streets”? The guy in the article sleeping linked had a picture of a bloke on a farm, for example. As long as it is outside, and of people going about their daily lives, is it ok?

I think the “how much posing is allowed” should be left up to the voters, someone making a face might be a really interesting picture.
For example, I am a giant white guy in Japan away from Tokyo, so I simply don’t blend in, making it very hard to get pictures where the people aren’t reacting to me in at least some way. (Kids stare at me pretty much everywhere)

The farm picture I would say is off limits, that isn’t public in any way. That was just an example of how a wide-angle lens changes things.

Probably the simplest way to say what I am thinking of is places where people are not yet at their destination, so people in streets, sidewalks, parks, subways, trains, in their cars, etc..

I have the large white guy in Japan away from Tokyo problem too, which was one reason I asked. Anyway, I get the idea, and yes, I thought pictures where the subject is staring into the lens or showing awareness of the camera may well be popular with the voters.

Probably the simplest way to say what I am thinking of is places where people are not yet at their destination, so people in streets, sidewalks, parks, subways, trains, in their cars, etc..

I like that quote. It clarifies things.

The rest of the recent conversation changes my thoughts on the theme though. The ‘no posing’ thing was stuck in my head. To be clear – is some posing OK?

I have a couple recent pics of a poor lady and her bike. I don’t know if I plan to use either of them. But would the obviously posed one be OK for this theme?

Yeah, that was my thinking. People at public events might work, but I don’t know.

I think the posing is over the line when you start having props that aren’t stuff that the person brought with them. So, both pictures fit the theme perfectly.

But, if someone can find a bum drinking champagne out of a champagne glass, that would work…

I think it’s fine if the person sees you and wants to present themselves. It’s the unplanned meeting aspect that sets street photography apart. I did a lot of shots when I was riding the bus, but I held the camera in my lap and had headphones on and it was set to a manual focus/wide angle, so I’d line up a shot, look the other way out the window and wait for a bump on the road to hit the shuttter so it wasn’t as obvious. I only had two or three people notice that I was taking photos in about 4 months of daily commuting.

here is a gallery of my bus shots