Sunday 9 January 2011

Street Photography Now Week 15

Just to recap where I am with this project.  Instruction 11 was the last week in which I made a submission.  Weeks 12, 13 and 14 I've missed, but for the record these instructions were:


week 12: look for the stars even in broad daylight: Markus Hartel
week 13: look closer to home: Lars Tunbjork
week 14: show us the aftermath: Maciej Dakowicz


For 2011 I've decided to bring in a few changes. I'm not going to stick religiously to the brief. The value in the project is in getting me out each week from which photographic opportunities will arise. Knowing a little more about the genre and reading various discussions in the SPN forums, I feel more confident now that street photography has less to do with the location and more to do with the approach.  With this in mind I'm not going to limit myself to urban street photographs anymore. It may be blatantly obvious, but it has only just dawned on me that I'm not playing to my strengths. So I'm going to photograph the landscape, countryside, rural views and take the images with the street photography rather than landscape genre in mind. Some examples are below (I think you can click on them to make them bigger):





So this weeks instruction which is the fifteenth was provided by Melanie Einzig:
Wander aimlessly most of the time
I read this in an open way in the spirit I think it was intended, a nice one to ease us back in to the swing of the things after Christmas. Our weekend's jaunt took us to Keswick where we popped up to Castlerigg Stonecircle. The examples above are what I would consider 'street' imagery in a rural setting focussing not on the landscape but on life 'within' the landscape. The third image has an absence of people, however it isn't absent of life or narrative. The first image is my choice of submission, albeit I am well aware of its compositional weaknesses. It is this rural street photography I want to explore further.


NB.  a slight issue I am having with my camera for street photography is how the camera uses the centre for focussing.  I'm finding I'm not quick enough to recompose resulting in too many of my shots being centred. I could change the AF points but I'll still need to recompose, perhaps there is no way around this - I just need to get quicker!!


Post Edit: the top image made it in to the SPN author's picks!

3 comments:

  1. I think these work really well. Love the light ans space. I think the first picture is great when opened up so you can see all that's going on. A pano crop would work well also. I really like the 2nd picture also: the central elements - man, stone, little girl - add to the strong graphic elements but also have some ambiguity and suggest lots of possible storylines.
    Good to see you back in the swing of things again Penny!

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  2. Reading about "some" street photographers, they don't focus. OK, they set the aperture to f8 and pre-focus for 4-8ft. Probably won't help with this rural slant though (which I like the idea of).

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  3. Thanks Eileen for your supportive comments. A pano crop would work well - although I think I could have done better to fill more of the picture ideally. Hi Rob, I think I've heard this too - I don't think I'm consistent enough yet in my subject matter, I suspect if you do street portraits you could, but I keep chopping and changing. Might try it though!

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