Tilted Street Photography: Go out, do some, post results here :)

If you already do it, I am keen to see how you approach street photography. If you've never done it before, or only occasionally - sometimes by accident, then I am keen to see you go ahead and approach it for the first time or more often.

My outcome for this thread is that increasingly, when we are out and about, we'll whip out our cameras/cameraphones, with Tilted Intent, knowing that this thread is waiting for us to share our results. Please note - those moments we don't whip it out, or whip it out too late are also results, and can be as important to share as the picures we actually DO get.

Here is a Wikipedia description of what Street Photography covers

I'll extend it to include the insides of malls, shops and public buildings.




OK: My first contribution.
In my own words: it is a moving ballet of the observer affecting the observed, by combining observation, timing and intent in a negotiation between recording and imposing meaning. In this post, here's how I apply it to a subsection of street photography which I call Street Portraits.

In the following three examples, I noticed them in the distance and I 'saw' a film they could be in. I had imposed meaning, yet, to tilt the odds, and because I love it when people RAWK, I'd chosen the film which, to my best guess, would be the ones they'd shine in. That is where 'negotiation' comes in: I must seek to be sensitive to their 'dramatic skills'. Thus is my intent formed and I 'know what I am doing. Observation and timing, from the beginning, determines the speed and angle.

Micro details: I don't want them in mid-blink or on the 'down turn' or 'release' of an expression. Ideally I want them at the peak, as a statement of identity - these three are all at the peak, or on the last third of the ascent from previous 'expression' to 'this' expression, and demonstrate the movement of 'doing'.

If they flicker to and from between two or three main expressions/poses, I merely have to work out which film will be best for which expression, and choose which one works best overall, then simply keep the appointment to be at the right place in the right time.

My outcome is to make a picture which looks like it was designed and chosen by THEM as publicity still for a film they'd produced.













Best wishes

 

thanks for this thread. I will be posting in it later on today. I love street photography.

 

I am a surreptitious street photographer. I have a hard time asking people to let me take their picture.

 

Most of the time I'm a little uncomfortable taking photos of people.
Sometimes I get my bold on, and go for it.

 

i've been going through unedited batches of photos today.
these were taken on July 4th of this year at a park that is across the street from where we live.
it was a madhouse so we walked the gauntlet once and came back home, swam around in the pool for a while and then watched the fireworks from a blanket on the hillside in front of our apartment complex. it was a nice evening.

 

@MM, Hi. I, too, am surreptitious for the reason you describe. I think this reason spurred me to develop a second one: I do not wish my presence to interfere with their natural dramatic strength - the purity of their self expression. Your "Smoking Man", for example full-hand and face tilt, becomes, to my eyes, a non-mainstream icon. A professional model would, perhaps, have needed Michael Caine's skills of understatement to avoid 'popping out' of the harmony of contrasts provided by the natural and artifact verticals of tree-trunk and post, and how they pair up with combats and greenery. George Michael would have overpowered these subtleties in the environment, rather than letting them work for him, furthermore, to my thinking, you have already given the subject all the energy he needs with that blue 'lid' which bounces the strong vertical energy back down and on to his t-shirt, and the car, whose wheel is the vertex of a cone of energy which expands into .. yes him! Speaking of which, I like the cones of energy leading toward the bodies of the guitarist and poodle.

Having been sidetracked, as recounted in my discussion thread, by 'channelling Ansel Adams', I regret that I have yet to finalize my choices from the work of him and Bressons as you requested, but for now, may I point to your "Walkers on the beach" as exemplifying what I like about Bressons. A dense jack-in-the-box of mood and structure. Opposite directions of heads-down single-file couples on the right contrast with the hand-holding abreastness on the left which is, itself a coupledom contrasting with the tiny single figure with is the apex of another of your great cones of energy ... this time sealed off by the dark artifact on the right - another 'bounce', this time into a hothouse of feelings through postures and arrangements of aloneness and togetherness.


Hi @Magpi, I like the way you cut space diagonally in these. For example, the vertically balanced zig zag in pic 1 urges my eye to and past him, then those waves push it back to shore. He is still, I am kept moving. Differently from in 2 and 4 where, whilst the diagonal stores an energy of movement, I am anchored to the position of the subjects. Your balance of space in 2 leads me to flip from between the portrait 'intimacy' of the father-child and the seascape vastness of the sea which, like IN MM's number 1 bounces me back to the people; whereas in 4, I am kept even more predominantly with the subject, the young lady ... her stillness is against background motion which is truly in the background relative to the strength of her state of thinking. Even the, IMO at this range, unavoidable line-through-head you've positioned so the contemplative expression is fully highlit by the grass - an alignment of stillness.


ring, Hi. Please get your bold on more frequently so the little discomfort becomes, through familiarity, increasingly littler; for there is more to do. This picture is part of a set which I have not yet seen, and which you may or may not yet have taken. Because, you actively saw and recorded all of the subjects at the very peak of their moments, thus amplifying the contrast between the intensity relationship between the man and the woman and the laid-back, though equally immersive relationship, of the young man with his can of drink. By your placement, his smaller size beyond the column gives space for primacy of the lady's mood as 'main character' in the top-centre of the frame, yet, with the addition of your timing, you subvert this by making him the focus and destination of an energy-cone consisting of an almost mathematically precise distribution of heads and hands, supported even by the alignment of her spectacles and his can. As with MM's first picture, he gains iconic status without trying, yet does not upstage the environment which, in this case includes essential beauty of the couple's held hands anchoring the complementarity of passive and active as he listens and she speaks. It is a street portrait which moves me deeply, and one of many such brief encounters I hope you will share with us. Some of them, perhaps, as is MixedMedia's second contribution, connected as a series depicting one event or excursion.


I have yet to fully immerse myself in the 4th of July Collection, must therefore pause before further response, and will finish on this general note:

I go out of the house and sometimes feel our lives to be ice-sculptures, as the dance of carving and melting becomes part of the created, that the world pulls us to notice pivotal moments, and that when we go forth with our cameras, our bold, and our love and respect for our subjects, this world pulls us to notice more, and more, until the binding forces between elements glow and sizzle into a display of connections and our connectedness with them, as we travel through town, time and space, to transform matter into what matters.

MM, Magpi and Ring, thank you so much for laying the foundation stones of this thread.

Best wishes.

 

From the same event: March 17'th, 1991

 

I forgot to say thank you, Zen. Glad you like!

 

And thank you, ring for this second picture. When I saw the first, its density of structure told me it had been taken by a 'knowing' eye ... that it could not be the only one. There had to be others, and I appreciate this it's another portrait of two moods. I like the way the red coats and the shades work to unify the characters!

mixedmedia, your July 4th collection: Thank you. Watching them all together was great, because it made me part of the movement, kept me darting in and out among the different scenes and stories. There was so much movement and details within the movement. Very Exciting

 

Don't be surreptitious. Get up close to people. Interact with them. Be like Bruce (disclaimer, street photography with flash almost started a fight in New York City.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRBARi09je8

 

bruce gilden is bruce gilden. and i am not bruce gilden.

but i like bruce gilden.

 

Thanks for the video, it's fascinating to see how different people go about it, and to be given insight in to the attitudes which govern their methods.

I invite others here share their own methods and attitudes, if they want, and those of other photographers.

 

Another from the series.

 

Thanks again, ring. This one gets me with its coordination of colour, texture and pattern

Here are some more from me:

 

Well I was going to post something, just like I have in other threads, but apparently I'm considered a spammer now. Fuck this.

 

Confederate .... hi, I don't know the details of the situation. Who considered you a spammer, please give a link. Your HDR in the other thread pic was great ... shame to lose your contribution if there's been a misunderstanding.

 

ring, I really love that series of photos. post more!

zen, i can see your bresson influence. very, very nice.

I like this thread.

 

Thank you, Ms Media!
Zen, I like your photos. Especially the lighting of the cig one.

Here's one from inside during the goings on:
I have more photos of this day.....somewhere.
They've become unorganized over the decades.

 

MM and Ring, thanks for your comments. Looking at the length of those shadows in the cig picture, it looks like the sun could have been low enough to begin to add warmth which, though mid-day harshness was long gone, still retained an edge of crispness. I, too, like this thread, and as 'Favorite Photographers' is to inhaling, so I hope these 'go take photos' threads may become to exhaling: inventories of mutual encouraging and celebrating sharing developing seeing.

Ring, thank you for that last one. Y'know, it's an amazing experience as you deal the cards one by one, the gradual emergence of some whole becoming as compelling as each part. Now you mention "Goings on" and my other thoughts for the day gridlock and honk me as I slow down, rubber-necking for more details here please! And "Decades" ... well, I just had to say something! As you search for those other pictures, please would you be willing to tell the story? What was happening on that day?