As you probably already know I love street photography and yesterday I shared some.
But for me the images get really interesting if there are people in there, and as you have seen yesterday… well there were no people 🙂
So today it is time for the second street photography series, this time with the people.
As you know I’m always carrying a camera, this way it’s always possible to take a picture.
The best way I heard this described was actually by Jay Maisel who said “If you don’t have your camera with you it becomes incredibly difficult to get the shot”. Most of the times you will see yourself shoot in situations that are not the run of the mill locations or situations and sometimes this gives you some amazing shots. I do have to be honest that the following shot I did not take myself, I was driving and asked Annewiek to take the shot the way I wanted it, a bit of the hood of the car and a slightly longer shutterspeed, this way we captured the speed effect I think pretty nicely.
Always remember that when you shoot something with motion in a forward moving vehicle that you will see a sort of “stretch” effect, this effect is something that I LOVE to use in tunnels etc. as you can see here.
Now a lot of people ask me how I became interested in street photography.
Well indeed it’s a bit different from the fashion work we do, but I think it also has a lot of similarities, in my street photography I always try to get the story, the feeling, the tension or movement, Jay Maisel for example calls it Gesture, I call it…. well after hearing that also Gesture 😀 (who can argue with Jay right?)
Finding that special thing, that special feeling is something that I try to do in both my fashion work and streetphotography, in my opinion that’s what sets the snapshot apart from the street photography. Now let me make clear that I only do streetphotography as a hobby and no way claim to be a pro at it, however over time I did find some things that I think can be very interesting for someone starting out with this kind of photography.
One of the most asked questions is always “Where to go?”
Well if you live in a city like New York that’s not hard, it’s a circus coming into town 24/7/365 it’s just not fair, but if you live somewhere else (like most people) some cool places are always close, let’s for example look at some images I took at a standard flea market.
Let me start off by telling you that I don’t think of myself as a great travel photographer, my main focus is fashion/glamour and teaching those areas of photography. However thanks to my work I do travel a lot and over the years I’ve been building a portfolio from the shots I take during the trips that I even feature on my website, meaning that I really like those shots. Of course most of the images I took 2-3 years ago are now replaced by new ones, and the new ones I like a lot better so I’m learning every trip.
During my seminar “being creative and getting the shot” there is a lot of attention for some parts of travel/street photography and people respond very positive to this part of the seminar, so I thought it would be fun to share some tips on the blog, I hope it will help you out on your next trip/vacation to take better shots. And remember that ALL these techniques also translate to model/fashion/glamour photography.
Find reflections
Reflections are found everywhere, you can start out with some reflections of yourself in sunglasses or in windows, but it gets more interesting when the reflections are getting bigger and what is better for this than huge skyscrapers. Play a bit with the tilt of your camera (angle) and you can create some very interesting looking images.
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