Street photography with M240: tips

[Ko.Fe.]

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On 10/28/2019 at 1:54 PM, Herr Barnack said:

I certainly do not endorse, advocate or defend his methods of doing street photography, no do I employ his techniques myself. 

IMHO Gilden's methods are inappropriate, inconsiderate, rude and leave the subject with a negative experience of being photographed.  That does no good for the rest of us who just want to do street photography without being harassed.  "A velvet hand, a hawk's eye - these we should all have" are the watch words of a street photographer, at least from where I stand.

Pushing the photographic envelope is usually a good thing, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Gilden has different methods. One is direct flash from his height. But he also takes it without flash and he also takes pictures without flash and fully engaging with person. Sometimes even booking time. Or coming to special places.

The first method is harsh, but it helped me to learn a lot about his subjects. Gilden first method is very harsh, but it has humanist approach. 

Velvet eye and hawk hand is old fox smoke in the mirror. Just wordy words he produced to keep the image. But he also described photography as prey-hunter approach.   

I'm not affected by Gilden in my street photography. Because I'm realist, not "it hurts my feelings" person. In real world here are billions of people. 

I have been on different continents, in different countries, under different regimes and so called "cultures". I never seen Gilden, never seen anyone like him with flash into people faces. Guess what, billions never seen it ever. If they never seen it, they don't know it. How it could affect street photography? Most of the people don't even know it exist.

 

[epand56]

On 10/25/2019 at 2:05 PM, paulmac said:

I think there is probably no better way to learn "Street Photography" or indeed any social documentary style photography than to watch this BBC film about Don McCullin  called "Looking for England"

To me it's like a visual treat and I watch it about every 3 months.

In the film Don McCullin visits my home town of Bradford in the UK and says of it " It's an amazing city and there is a picture around every corner" and this is absolutely true so I know that it's easy for me to pontificate about social documentary photography because I live in a place that makes it so easy to go out and make the sort of images that I was talking about in my previous posts.

Anyway - if you have an interest in this type of photography I urge you to look at this:-

 

Regards Paul Mac

Amazing film, amazing Character, McCullin, great humanity and great eye. Thank you Paul for pointing at this little masterpiece on photography, I had a great time looking at it. 
Love to see that even Mr Mc Cullin is chimping when shooting a digital camera.

[etp095]

On 8/6/2019 at 10:39 AM, sanadsaad said:

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Gypsies?

[Landberg]

On 8/14/2019 at 4:34 PM, epand56 said:

My 2 pennies: I think most of the so called "street photography" images I see are just "photos". I mean I do not consider people walking in the street "street photography". There must be much more in a picture to be considered "street", there must be something very unusual, very funny or very strange, something we do not see often. It's a very difficult kind of photography. Is not enough to shoot a flash in the face of a scared or horrified or raging stranger (as Bruce Gilden does) that makes a picture look "street". Cartier-Bresson was great at it, he did it with an extraordinary lightness.

I agree 100%. And I think it’s the same in this forum. Loads of cash, very little talent. Maybe Leica has become just a jewelry. It has little to do with good photography nowadays.