'Street Photography' - Howto

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The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[frc]

Wondered where he went,

A traveller so

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[Guest stnami]

ssshhhhhh

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[Guest Metroman]

 

Thanks for the lead Andy. Great site and a complete change for me. I'll be going back.

 

Rolo

 

Rolo - Thanks but it was originally posted by Martin Hupfer back in August last year:

 

http://www.leica-camera-user.com/customer-forum/3585-nice-book-abaout-streetphotographie.html

[hofrench]

It might sound flip, but the answer is: "Just do it."

If you believe in what you're doing, wear a relaxed expression, know how to smile an unforced smile and can look someone in the eye when the question arises, as it inevitably will, "why do you want to take my picture?" and tell them because you are interesting, or cool or beautiful or because the scene is a compelling one, then you can do it.

Most of the difficulty is in one's own head, not out there on the street.

 

I Beg on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Stroll on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

My Fair Lady on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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[JohnVerity]

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Looking here, several years ago, ...

 

http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/xtol1.html

 

... I found this, which I treasure:

 

Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop With Garry Winogrand

Two weeks with a master of street photography that changed my life

 

 

By Mason Resnick

 

My two-week workshop with Garry Winogrand began in a third floor classroom above crowded Nassau Street in lower Manhattan in August 1976. We spent the first day looking at his portfolio. Winogrand's photos showed an amazing lack of adherance to any rules of composition. Like the streets below, the images were filled with people in motion. There was a precarious, dynamic balance between humor and loneliness in the odd angles--an unfamiliar but powerful combination. We looked at the portfolio without hearing a word of explanation. Winogrand spoke little. He seemed bored and restless, uncomfortable about being stuck in a classroom. When he did talk, his raspy voice reminded me of a a New York cabdriver's. A few times, people tried breaking the awkward silence with a question that was answered with barely a monosyllable. We had a coffee break. Winogrand still wasn't talking. He seemed to be waiting for us to ask him to tell us something, but whatever he had to say wouldn't come easily. We struggled to find questions, hoping one would coax some information out of him. Winogrand broke one long silence by telling an off-color joke. We went home after four hours, perplexed. What had we learned?

 

The next day, Tuesday, was a bit better--the questions came faster, there were fewer silences--But ultimately just as perplexing. Winogrand told us that anything was photographable. He said that we only make the pictures we know; it is hard to break from our preconceptions about how something should look photographed. He told us to let what we see determine where the edges of the photograph go. He challenged us to forget our preconceptions about how to photograph something. "A photograph," he said, "is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera saw a piece of time and space." I wanted to know what technique Winogrand used to get his best shots, and all he'd talk about was a strange, esoteric theory! By Wednesday, the students were getting restless. We had a gripe session with the program director; several students were ready to drop out. The direcor confided that Winogrand doesn't make learning easy; be patient, he earged, it's worth it. If we weren't satisfied by the weekend, he'd give us a refund.

 

Back to class. After an hour or so of Winogrand's interminable jokes and more coffee, the whole exercise seemed futile. Suddenly, almost in exasperation, he said, "Aww, let's go out and take some pictures." That's when the class started. He opened his camera bag. In it were two Leica M4's, equipped with 28mm lenses and dozens of rolls of Tri-X. The top of the bag was covered with yellow tabs. He told us he wrote light conditions on the tabs and put them on rolls as he finished them so he would know how to develop them. As we walked out of the building, he wrapped the Leica's leather strap around his hand, checked the light, quickly adjusted the shutter speed and f/stop. He looked ready to pounce. We stepped outside and he was on.

 

We quickly learned Winogrand's technique--he walked slowly or stood in the middle of pedestrian traffic as people went by. He shot prolifically. I watched him walk a short block and shoot an entire roll without breaking stride. As he reloaded, I asked him if he felt bad about missing pictures when he reloaded. "No," he replied, "there are no pictures when I reload." He was constantly looking around, and often would see a situation on the other side of a busy intersection. Ignoring traffic, he would run across the street to get the picture. Incredibly, people didn't react when he photographed them. It surprised me because Winogrand made no effort to hide the fact that he was standing in way, taking their pictures. Very few really noticed; no one seemed annoyed. Winogrand was caught up with the energy of his subjects, and was constantly smiling or nodding at people as he shot. It was as if his camera was secondary and his main purpose was to communicate and make quick but personal contact with people as they walked by. At the same time, as he passed from shadow into sunlight into shadow again, he was constantly adjusting his meterless camera. It was second nature to him. In fact, his first comment right out the door was, "nice light--1/250 second at f/8." I tried to mimic Winogrand's shooting technique. I went up to people, took their pictures, smiled, nodded, just like the master. Nobody complained; a few smiled back! I tried shooting without looking through the viewfinder, but when Winogrand saw this, he sternly told me never to shoot without looking. "You'll lose control over your framing," he warned. I couldn't believe he had time to look in his viewfinder, and watched him closely. Indeed, Winogrand always looked in the viewfinder at the moment he shot. It was only for a split second, but I could see him adjust his camera's position slightly and focus before he pressed the shutter release. He was precise, fast, in control. Inspired, I shot eight rolls that day. Up all night printing, the next morining I excitedly showed Winogrand some 50 workprints. He divided them up into a good and a bad pile, then handed them to me without comment. I pressed him for details: what made this print work? Why did he like that shot? He simply said, "It's a good photograph." He told me to take a close look at the shots he liked and keep shooting. I was disappointed, but I felt challenged. The rest of the workshop followed the same pattern. I shot like a maniac all day (as did most of the other students), worked in the darkroom until dawn, schlepped my pile of 8x10s back into New York from Long Island for the 9 a.m. class. Winogrand divided the shots into good and bad. I studied his selections, trying to divine his logic. I eventually realized that when the whole photograph worked--an intuitive response to something visual, unexplainable in words--he liked it. If only part of the photo worked, it wasn't good enough. Cropping was out--he told us to shoot full-frame so the "quality of the visual problem is improved." Winogrand told us to photograph what we linked, and to trust our choices, even if nobody else agreed with them. By the second week, Winogrand had opened up and told us about his working methods, which were rather unorthodox but not sloppy. He never developed film right after shooting it. He deliberately waited a year or two, so he would have virtually no memory of the act of taking an individual photograph. This, he claimed made it easier for him to approach his contact sheets more critically.

 

"If I was in a good mood when I was shooting one day, then developed the film right away," he told us, I might choose a picture becuase I remember how good I felt when I took it, not necessarily because it was a great shot. You make better choices if you approach your contact sheets cold, separating the editing from the picture taking as much as possible."

 

 

continued in next post ......

[JohnVerity]

... continued from previous post, which was too long for Forum to post in one go.

 

 

 

Winogrand developed by inspection to avoid overly contrasty or flat negativves. He would make contacts, then make 8x10 prints of everything but technically inferior negs. "I need to see what they look like large before I can make selections," he explained. To save time, he exposed the negatives in bulk--a hundred or so 8x10 or 11x14 prints at a time. As he finished one exposure, he put the print in a box and exposed the next negative. When he was done, he would develop the prints en masse. These were workprints, so quality was not expected to be the best. Exhibit prints, however, had to be perfect. "Without technique, you won't get anything good," he noted. Winogrand found some of his best-known themes by looking through his workprints. He never went out saying "I want to photograph X today," because this would reate preconceptions and prevent him from being open to seeing other things. He worked with no preconceptions about what would be a proper photographic subject or how a photo should look. He said, "I photograph something to see what it will look like photographed." He encouraged us to look at great photographs. See prints in galleries and museums to know what good prints look like. Work. Winogrand recommended looking at The Americans by Robert Frank, American Images by Walker Evans, Robert Adams' work and the photographs of Lee Friedlander, Paul Strand, Brassai, Andre Kertesz, Weegee and Henri Cartier-Bresson. He told us to place ourselves where a lot is happening to get a lot of pictures. His favorite place to shoot: Columbus Circle in New York City, Sundays at 3 p.m. ("Lots of action.") Why did he tilt his horizons? "What tilt?" he answered. He wasn't interested in keeping the horizin straight within the frame, but always had a vertical frame of reference in his images. (This may be the only rule of composition he taught us.) He told us to treat editing photographs as "an adventure in seeing" and to enjoy the whole process. HE said that tension between the form and content of a photograph makes it succeed. He told us that the most successful art is almost on the verge of failure. These random ideas eventually added up a coherent approach to photography that can be summed up in two words: no preconceptions. His photos looked like nothing that came before. Even his teaching method (letting the students create the lesson by responding only to their questions) reflected his philosophy of not relying on any previous example of how it's done.

 

After two weeks, exhausted, I saw my camera and the world differently. Encouraged by Winogrand's parting words--"Get another camera and work at it"--I bought a Leica M-3 witha 35mm Summaron and continued exploring. I saw Winogrand only once after that workshop, at a lecture he gave at my alma mater, Queens College, in 1982. I showed him some recent work. He said he liked it, and told me to keep shooting. He signed a photo I took of him at the workshop and said, "See you next time." But there wasn't a next time. Two years later he was gone.

 

###

[JohnVerity]

Lisette Model, one of her students once told me, believed that street photogs ought to shoot first, then ask questions. Get the photo, was her philosophy. Later, if you have to, deal with the consequences.

 

Granted, she lived and worked in different times, when cameras weren't as plentiful and common and the public was not as media-conscious. But it is good advice - be bold. Act. Consummate.

 

Indeed, another tidbit for thought: When Cartier-Bresson was making those famous images of his during the '30s, his Leica was more or less invisible to everyone on the street. Back then, people were simply unaware that there were any cameras as small as his; cameras were still big boxy bulky things that one couldn't hide. So, not knowing of the Leica's existence, people just did not see it in Henri's hands. (As, supposedly, the Native Americans could not 'see' Columbus' ships, at first, for such things had never been in their worlds before; except, perhaps, when Lief Ericson arrived years earlier, etc. etc.!) Now, of course, everyone knows that cameras are small thingies and that anyone with his or her hands near his/her face is quite likely to be shooting pix - and therefore, be on guard, make a face, hid yourself, antagonize, demand royalties, etc. Later in life, I have read, C.-B. came to loathe the fact that the world had become so full of cameras - in every tourist's hand, etc.

 

Another thought, gleaned from a Usenet poster long ago: Think of your camera as a jar and the people heading towards you on the street as fish. You points the camera-jar's mouth-lens at this oncoming flow of subjects and, at the right moment, open it and capture the scene.

 

And yet another: Learn to forget your camera. Learn to see through it, ignoring all the technical details of focus and shutter and aperture; all that is preset. You become one with your camera and shoot. This, I am sure, is how the masters do it. Selgado, for instance. These people are not photographing, not like you and me - they are seeing, full-force.

There used to be a course given at Parson's, the NY art school, about exactly this - forgetting your camera. Like the archer practicing Zen and becoming one with the arrow.

[frc]

They are people like you and me,

Look, shoot, over and over,

Forget about your daytime job,

forget the cam,

be out there, make many exposures,

grab the shot.

 

Putting these people on an unreachable level makes no sense.

If any of them would have had that attitude they wouldn't have become who they have become.

 

No icons, no heroes, no unreachable.

 

Respect though is something else.

[Guest stnami]

............................... forget about clichés such as -

Like the archer practicing Zen and becoming one with the arrow

[frc]

In the making.

Not Zen but blisters.

Negative advice for street-shooting.

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mmmmmmmmmmm..........................................

[JohnVerity]

I have watched the video of Meyerowitz shooting on the streets of NYC ...

 

http://joelmeyerowitz.com/photography/interview_06.html

 

... and I have to say, how disappointing. He's bobbing and weaving, alright, but what evidence is there that he has caught even a single good photo? Certainly, the ones shown are not good - and, I bet, they're not is, they're frames of video caught by someone else.

Clearly, this guy is The Man when it comes to street photo, but here, he is just having a good time for the sake of a video cameraperson. His advice is fairly lightweight - useful, I am sure, only for the complete novice who needs to be pepped up to plunge into the street full of strangers and start shooting. Better would have been to have him shoot, then show us the developed results and discuss his decisions and thinking frame by frame. Oh well. It's good to see him in action even a little.

 

I remember reading one of these famous NYC st. photogs saying how amazing it is to think of Meyerowitz and Winograd and others all prowling Fifth Ave. at the same time, and how they could easily have bumped into each other. Etc. etc. (I think I read this in Geoff Dyer's quite wonderful book, The Ongoing Moment.)