Street Photography
morning stroll
Out and about for a walk this morning, a great time to capture people getting their day underway … just out for a stroll (with kiwi hat, perhaps before going to the cricket, but socks and sandals – oh boy); or hobbling to see the doctor; or powering to the gym … everyone’s got their own things to do.
clark lane
It’s about time I found another lane way to shoot … let me introduce Clark Lane. Still not as cool as the funky old ones in Melbourne, but I’ll keep looking.
…. and I even got a few onlookers wondering what the hell I was doing.
street
With a couple of hours spare, I went to check out the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery. Cartier-Bresson helped develop the ‘street photography’ genre, and is revered by many, but I’ve got to say, the exhibition was a little disappointing. The photos were good, but I don’t think they were outstanding … maybe I just see things differently … only a couple of images really grab you as they pop out from the wall.
That said, it was my inspiration to shoot a few images ‘street’ style today. Who knows, with a few decades of photography under our belts, maybe we could all have an exhibition one day.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
all business
I love a lot of styles of photography – especially macro – but there is something about ‘street’ that intrigues me. It’s know of ‘raw’, if that makes any sense, a snapshot of life all around us, a split second view into others lives. It’s also a style that is really really difficult – maybe just because it’s new to me – I need to take hundreds of shots for just one or two ‘keepers’ – and you never know what the reaction is going to be from the subject (i.e. stranger just going about their life).
rainbow treasury
I just happened to be walking past the Treasury Casino tonight, and it was calling out to be photographed, in all it’s colourful glory.
urban veins
I thought that I’d try something a little different tonight, trying to get a bit of an industrial/urban vibe.
With all the technology that’s in the world now, everything is connected. Buildings have ‘veins’ running through them that act like arteries, connecting all sorts of things, providing ‘life’ to the building.
taxi
Had an interesting final day in Sydney today. It’s a great city to visit, great sights to see, lots of diversity from different cultures, to different era’s of surroundings.
I spent a couple of hours after checking out of the hotel wandering the city (stopping in at the World Press Photo exhibition along the way) capturing anything that caught my eye.
I found this car on Pitt Street. There were are couple of different models, parked on the street, waiting for what appeared to be filming of a movie or tv advert. If google serves me correct, it’s a 1958 FC Holden taxi cab.
I carried on the theme of ‘street photography’ – possibly my last day to have time to do it, as I’m back to work tomorrow – but here are a few of the images that caught my eye as I wandered the streets of Sydney.
blue sky (for a moment)
Still in Sydney, and for a minute today I thought that the weather had cleared when a little blue sky appeared. And cleared just as I was walking around Circular Quay with a great view of the Opera House.
Sadly, it disappeared as quick as it arrived, with grey clouds rolling back in bringing pouring rain and cold winds. But it does look like it is clearing, so fingers crossed for my last day down here tomorrow.
With plenty of time to kill, I spent a few more hours today ‘on the street’. I’m definitely no where near as good as eric kim yet (if you’ve seen some of his videos he definitely gets more ‘keepers’ that ‘rejects’, but i’m definitely getting better. Here are a few shots from today:
street photography … the stairway
Another gloomy, wet and cold day in Sydney … but I rugged up, borrowed an umbrella and hit the streets to try a bit more street photography.
It is certainly a challenge getting a good street shot, definitely hard to get a well composed, focused image in a fraction of a second as a moment comes and goes, but that’s part of the attraction.
Don’t know what it is about this one, but it really jumped out.
Here are a few others that I think are ‘keepers’ (the other 90 will be deleted).
grey day
I’ve travelled down to Sydney for a few days. Only 1000km south, but today it was a world apart. I left Brisbane this morning, hardly a cloud in the sky, a beautiful clear blue sky, and temperature perfect in the early 20′s. An hour or so later, and I’m in Sydney, it’s more than just a grey day, it’s absolutely dreadful – pouring driving rain and icy winds – and worse still forecast to be more of the same for the entire time i’m here.
But it’s not all bad …. occasionally these grey days produce some great images.
And here’s the contrast … this is just after take off, looking out over the Gold Coast from 38,000 feet:
street
Part of learning how to take better photos is to study others work, and an area of photography that always catches my eye is ‘street photography’ – it’s an artform, capturing amazing images of ordinary life as it passes by.
There are some amazing street photographers, some famous names like Henri Cartier-Bresson were renowned street photographers. Bruce Gilden has this incredible ‘in your face’ style – search his name on youtube and you’ll see what I mean.
Searching the internet today the name Eric Kim pops up, and his site is definitely worth a visit if you like street photography – his blog shares a lot of his knowledge, thoughts and experience shooting on the street – done in a very entertaining way – and using his philosophy of ‘open source photography’, sharing for everyone’s benefit.
I had a go myself today. I definitely don’t have the confidence of Bruce Gilden, or even Eric for that matter, so getting up in people’s faces was never going to happen. I decided to try to ‘shoot from the hip‘ with my Canon s95 point & shoot and had some mixed results.
As the article says, it’s hard to frame the shots, it’s also hard to get good focus … but you can hit the mark a few times, something that I’m sure would improve with a bit of practice.