Street Photography

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I am now into photography; as an architect, I was trained to capture the space, the feeling, the atmosphere of places. The idea is, when we start designing, we try and create a certain type of ambiance. Taking photographs is a way to record, to document, to analyze or to imitate and maybe use it later on for all sort of purposes.

But it is easier to say than to put it in practice. The result is sometime good, but most of the time bad. I try to get more interested in photography, buying more sophisticated equipment, taking part in photography workshops…. The result is just the same; my photography is never in these categories:

Portraiture, as I don’t really like to take studio pictures, and I know I have no intention to open up my own photographic studio… I like my objects to be candid.
Landscape, maybe I am in this category, as I find landscape picture easier to handle, and to me landscape pictures always look beautiful especially during sunset. But to see my results … hmm I think I need to learn more, on apertures, focal length, colour, compositions, and a lot more.
Night photography, this is also interesting to me, but then again I am in the category of learning about photography, so too early for any success in this category.
Macro/close- up, could be interesting, but I don’t think this is me, I don’t have the patience to do the experiments and everything else.
Architecture photography, this is where I want to belong, but as yet I don’t have the sensitivity for all the composition and reading so many rules of photography, so that the buildings will look like what the architect wanted. But I believe that once the building is there, people start using it, nobody would understand or want to remember what the architects tried to achieved with the building anyway… it’s all the gimmick and sales talk of the architect.
Along with the above theories, I like cityscape photography, which shows skylines of a city, or aerial views of a city; but to do this, I need to distance myself from the city, or go up very high which happens very rarely.
Recently I stumbled upon the word of Street Photography, this is interesting, then I look up in Wikipedia which says:

Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.

I think this is me….

So what is the art of street photography? I did a small research on the internet, and this is what I found interesting: Street Photography is considered as “an introduction to Photography for a non Photographer”…. This is good, I think that’s me, even though I have held a camera since I was a young little girl, but up to know, I am still in the “introduction chapter”.

The rule of street photography:

It’s a no-rules photography, no rule of third for composition, no f stops, no shutter speed to think of; … the art of this? It is in the eye of the beholder, where as art speaks to those who prepare to listen.
It’s shooting from the hip. Yes, you don’t have to look at the view finder or the LCD to see your object behind the lens.
The object of the photograph could be everything of the daily activity, from a reflection in a rain puddle, a colour in a crowd, a texture of a façade or anything….
It is instant and point to shoot, the idea is to capture the moment as candid as possible before the birdy fly away to another country.
The result can be:

Out of focus, tilted horizon, or the least is ‘soft focus’
Odd things in the center ground, no center focus, odd crops
Very busy, tilted perspective, upside down

Next question is what is equipment for street photography? It’s very simple:

The best one of course is the pocket automatic camera, better still, nowadays, you can use your mobile phone, as a lot of mobile phone are equipped with a good mega pixel capability.
You don’t even need to use a tripod or fancy camera lense or filters, you can leave them at home.
If you use DSLR camera, it’s better off if you are also equipped with a zoom lens, as with this you are still able to shoot candid pictures without being offensive to the subject.

Well I think I like the term of street photography and thus I will start uploading my blur dot com version of my photographs so far, which you can see in this photoblog.

A good article in pdf file for additional info about street photography is here.

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