I love street photography and am always looking for ways to capture the essence of what it’s like to be walking about, in amongst a particular place.
Inspired by photos I’d seen posted by my friend Nate over at the blog Yomadic, and tips that I’d read on various blogs and websites, I decided to go into the Melbourne CBD today to get out my camera for the first time since arriving back in Australia and attempted to take some street photography with a different twist than my usual. That is, to put a real focus on the people of the city.
The one tip that was repeated time and time again with my research was to get the widest fixed lens I have and to get as close as possible to the subjects. This is of course very difficult. One, because it’s quite simply hard to take a good photo of someone going about their life without them noticing, but two, is that it feels somewhat unsettling doing it. Anyway, I had to put aside my fears and just go for it. After lots of random snapping, and plenty of discarded photos of the sky and floor (with this kind of photography you don’t know what the photo will be like until you review it as there’s no time to think, frame etc.) this is what I ended up with.
I still have a long way to go, but hopefully I can get better at this sort of photography over time and incorporate it into my repertoire. I certainly think that this kind of street photography has a certain element of excitement and realness to it, and shooting in black and white (another first for me) evokes, for me, the excitement present in the photos of the early pioneers of this kind of photography like Weegee, Brassai and Cartier-Bresson.
This type of photography is new to me, and really excites me. I’d be really happy to hear your thoughts, critiques and suggestions below.