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Nice assumption. I did in fact get "in his face" and I did in fact engage him in a conversation before I snapped the pic. The thing that caught my eye was that this "homeless guy" was deeply embroiled in studying. I found out what he was studying by asking him... he was studying a bible of some sort. The story I tried to convey with this pic wasn't "hey look some random hobo" but "hey look, even if a man finds himself homeless on the street he's still a human being and searching for knowledge, comfort or understanding. Don't just turn away and assume he's an animal." I didn't want to draw the focus on just the man, I wanted to point out the parallel between how deeply he was studying and what the conditions around him were. What he was studying was irrelevant, the fact that he *was* studying something despite being on the streets is what drew me. Sure beats pictures of crack whores and junkies pissing on themselves on the streets which is what I normally see day to day. Oh, and why is he looking down instead of at me when I took this? Because looking at me would have taken the focus off the book and his concentration. His finger tracing his passage through it would have been lost. The expression on his face would be lost. It wouldn't be the same picture at all and the story part of it would no longer work. I walked away with a newer appreciation because of him and because of my time taking this picture. And now, because this is the B&W thread, another pic:  My favorite doomsayer by gfoster, on Flickr This guy has been a regular on the street here for a long time. His doomsayer sign is nonsensical and he never seems to really know what he's trying to tell us all. He's not homeless, just part of our "local color". I got another picture of a young kid standing there next to him with his hands out, palm up asking him "what are you trying to tell people?" and him looking very confused while he tried to explain it to the kid but I got a lightpole right smack in the middle of the composition which ruins the story IMO. Pellethead fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 20:54
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I think you just found Yohji Yamamoto's younger brother.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:07
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Pellethead posted:Nice assumption. I did in fact get "in his face" and I did in fact engage him in a conversation before I snapped the pic. The thing that caught my eye was that this "homeless guy" was deeply embroiled in studying. I found out what he was studying by asking him... he was studying a bible of some sort. Making the assumption that your peers view the homeless as animals is a pretty condescending angle, especially given your view on "crack whores and junkies". You claim you want to create a context between the subject and his environment, but you've done nothing to to create that context. The top of a Gatorade bottle doesn't make for visual dichotomy.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:55
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Many of my peers DO view them as animals, at least the ones I generally encounter and engage with face to face in my daily life both at home and at work and the ones I thought of while I was out taking this picture. I get in conversations about this subject with some of them all the time. This is my (admittedly not anywhere close to perfect) attempt to add to the dialogue with them. The top of the gatorade bottle has nothing to do with it. We also DO have crack whores (real honest to goodness ones) and real honest to goodness junkies laying in their own piss about one block from me right now. I walk past them every day, one guy moaning non stop and scratching himself furiously all day, another who unabashedly sits in the middle of the busy sidewalk smoking his crack pipe while businessmen and construction workers walk around him, etc. I don't take pictures of these guys because there's no real other side to the story there, just raw abject misery. It's a very dismal thing, and when you see them without any hope, without any connection to their outside surroundings it tends to make you jaded. Being jaded leads to not seeing them at all anymore, which then just exacerbates the problem. The guy I spoke with in the above photo is indeed homeless. He's unapologetic about it (which is not meant to imply judgment by the way), but he's also interested in life and interested in thinking and examining his relationship to those around him. I personally found that refreshing. To me, this picture isn't about a disengaged homeless guy, it's about hope and engagement across all social strata. It's very hard to tell a story in 1/60 of a second and I rarely get it right. I'm very much an amateur but trying very hard to improve. I definitely appreciate the criticism from you because it tells me I didn't do enough to get the story across, either with the angle and subject, the initial composition or with the postprocessing. There very much IS a story (at least in my mind) that I'm trying to tell here though. If you don't like or agree with my story, that's fine. I understand that all stories are partially flawed and aren't going to hit each and every person. My comments above were addressed simply to the statement from the photography professor to "get in their face", attempt to find the story and to not just do random drivebys. Although I haven't thought about it in that way before, it made me stop and think and I can definitely agree with that. The next time I take a photo I will be asking myself "am I just taking a random picture or does this have meaning and impact". For that, I am very appreciative. Whether my story was told effectively or not is one thing, but it's a far different thing than whether I attempted to tell the story at all.
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Aug 19, 2014 22:21
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Pellethead posted:It's very hard to tell a story in 1/60 of a second and I rarely get it right. I'm very much an amateur but trying very hard to improve. The best way to start improving would be to not use a telephoto[-equivalent] focal length from a distance.
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Aug 19, 2014 22:25
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Thanks for the feedback. I am just now learning how zoom and distance affects my composition, depth of field, focal points etc and don't have the mechanics down as muscle memory yet. I was actually trying to get a really shallow depth of field (I wanted both the foreground and the wall blurry with him and the book in focus) and when I was closer and zoomed out it didn't work either. I stopped down the aperture a bit trying to accomplish it that way but was near the lower limit of my lens. I took about a dozen of these up close and zoomed out as well as taking a few steps back and zooming in and this was the only one I didn't just toss out right from the start. I'm stuck with the zoom lens. I don't have the luxury of changing lenses, it's a bridge camera so I only have one. I'm definitely open to recommendations as to the mechanics. Pellethead fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 22:39
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If you feel there's a story there, by all means go back. Getting in people's face is great, but if you want to build a story or a connect your subjects to the world around them as you see it, you need to go wider. Photographs don't always have to function on their own, narrative can be built with a series of images as well. If there's too many variables to your shooting process to focus on making your images work, start by removing the variables. If your shutter speeds are too slow to shoot reactively, crank the ISO. If you're fumbling with your zoom lens, keep it at one focal length and learn to see the world and interpret your shots in that field of view before looking through the viewfinder. burzum karaoke fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 22:59
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Interesting ideas and I like the suggestions. I'm trying hard to focus on composition and story telling without letting the mechanics get in the way, but I still feel a bit intimidated by the whole exposure triangle thing. I have been looking for some local classes and been studying books in the meantime. I'm shooting mainly in aperture priority mode and leaving everything else to autoselect (ok, admittedly I will override ISO when I think it's pushing into the grainy stage). I like the idea of keeping the focal length fixed and not using the zoom at all for a bit and I will try that. I think I should take your advice to heart and step back even further from the process by removing those variables as much as possible. I've deliberately not let myself think of getting a better camera until I learn to use what I've got effectively to tell the stories I want to tell, but I can see maybe even though I've been trying to keep it simpler I'm still running before I can walk.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:10
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Pellethead posted:Nice assumption. Sorry for making that assumption. It's good to hear that you actually talked to the guy and got his permission and all that. It was the from-a-distance not-looking-into-the-lens bit which made it look like a candid, which is - as the photography professor I linked - a touchy subject. Maybe if that image had been part of a series as forums poster try it with a lime suggested - paired with a straight-on portrait for example - that immediate feeling of exploitation would have been less.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:36
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Noted and I can definitely see where you got that assumption. I will try to steer clear of leading people into those assumptions in the future. I don't have any issue with being called out on them, I (like to think anyway) that I can take criticism constructively. Admittedly, SA can be brutal and taking criticism constructively here is often easier said than done! I haven't really thought of doing a series like that, I've been very focused on trying to compress everything into the one photograph which is a lot harder than it looks. This was also my first time doing any sort of street photography. I was very nervous about it, taking pictures of strangers is a very personal and intimate thing and I had no idea how to go about it. I spent a good long time just people watching before I got up the courage to actually start engaging with people. I took about 50 photos and only managed to save around 15 of them. Of those 15, I think only one or two are really effective in conveying anything meaningful. As to doing a series, is there a particular number that people find most effective? Do you think this story would have worked better if I did a series of say three photographs with different subjects along the same theme or three of the same subject itself following a posed progression? Does mixing subjects in this kind of a series jump out as a bad thing to steer away from?
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Aug 19, 2014 23:51
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From the photos I've seen here and elsewhere on the web, pictures of homeless people on the streets usually comes off as fairly exploitative, as well as seeming like babby's first street photography. Humans of New York I think does a good job of distancing itself from those stereotypes; it also helps that the guy interacts with people from all walks of life and treats them with equal dignity. You might have to scroll down a ways to get past the international section (which is fascinating in its own right, don't get me wrong), but you can find quite a few pictures of the homeless where it really feels like he sat down and got their story first--because he did.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:20
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Homeless people, street performers, people holding protest signs, street vendors etc are all low-hanging fruit. They are right there so it's like shooting fish in a barrel, and except for in very unusual circumstances make for boring photos.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:51
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The other issue is that non-homeless people can choose to not be photographed in public. When we feel like we look like poo poo because it's a bad day or because we're sick we can choose to stay at home and not show our ugly mugs in public. Homeless people don't have the same luxury, they essentially have zero places to go with a reasonable expectation of privacy, and it just feels wrong to me to be taking advantage of that. Granted there are situations where it is acceptable, but way, way too many "street photographers" rely on the the novelty value of a dishevelled person to make an otherwise boring photo interesting. It's admirable what you're trying to do, and I'm sorry I have no useful advice on the matter, but there's very good reasons why photos of the homeless is so touchy.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:40
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Pellethead posted:This was also my first time doing any sort of street photography. I was very nervous about it, taking pictures of strangers is a very personal and intimate thing and I had no idea how to go about it. I spent a good long time just people watching before I got up the courage to actually start engaging with people. I took about 50 photos and only managed to save around 15 of them. Of those 15, I think only one or two are really effective in conveying anything meaningful. A 1-2% keeper ratio is fairly normal if not generous for street photography. Robert Frank only came back with 83 of 28,000+ shots when shooting 'The Americans'. You kind of just have to keep at it or it really will go nowhere. Pellethead posted:As to doing a series, is there a particular number that people find most effective? Do you think this story would have worked better if I did a series of say three photographs with different subjects along the same theme or three of the same subject itself following a posed progression? Does mixing subjects in this kind of a series jump out as a bad thing to steer away from? There's no right answer to this. It really comes down to what works for you. If this was your first time going out, thinking about a series is probably a little premature. Keep shooting, find out what kind of a photographer you are. In time, themes will eventually start to emerge on their own. Try digging around to find some artists (they don't necessarily have to be photographers) whose work speaks to you. Analyze it and try to figure out what you enjoy or dislike about what they do and why. If you're interested in street photography and photojournalism, Magnum is a decent place to start.
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Aug 20, 2014 04:12
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 Newport, Oregon by Ashade76, on Flickr
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Aug 27, 2014 19:41
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 Alhamra - 3 by theupstart, on Flickr
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Aug 31, 2014 18:27
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 Panama 056 by esa_foto, on FlickrI think I need to adjust the colors on my monitor. I have no idea how bright or dark this shot actually is. I did win a flickr photo contest among 5 other (pretty bad) photos.
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Sep 15, 2014 18:34
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huhu posted:
It's pretty much perfect here.
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Sep 16, 2014 02:23
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ape fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 19:52
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 Wintery landscape near Grande Prairie by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr
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Nov 23, 2014 06:00
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 _DSC0062 by straygiraffe, on Flickr
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Nov 23, 2014 20:28
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 Sin Ming by alkanphel, on Flickr  Bukit Merah by alkanphel, on Flickr  Bukit Merah by alkanphel, on Flickr
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Nov 25, 2014 00:01
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 2014 New Jersey-DSC00405-edit by esa_foto, on Flickr 2015 Vermont-DSC01258-edit by esa_foto, on Flickr Black and White (Boston, Massachusetts) by esa_foto, on Flickr
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Jan 4, 2015 19:07
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 Night Statue by MedievalMedic, on Flickr
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Mar 11, 2015 03:52
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 Sestola by maxmars70, on Flickr
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Mar 11, 2015 12:30
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I like this thread better on first page Modena, 27 feb 2015 by maxmars70, on Flickr
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Mar 27, 2015 14:40
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 Paris of the Plains by ryantss, on Flickr  Mowgli by ryantss, on Flickr tau fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 00:05
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 Jurong West by alkanphel, on Flickr  Lakeside by alkanphel, on Flickr  Jurong West by alkanphel, on Flickr  Lakeside by alkanphel, on Flickr
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Mar 31, 2015 05:28
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Mar 31, 2015 05:45
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Back! Modena, 27 Marzo 2015 by maxmars70, on Flickr
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Apr 10, 2015 09:32
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 Holland V by alkanphel, on Flickr
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May 22, 2015 04:22
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Jun 7, 2015 23:37
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 Trapped by Mitzalo Reyes, on Flickr Dead by Mitzalo Reyes, on Flickr
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Jul 7, 2015 20:49
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 P7100005 by vexborg, on Flickr
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Aug 2, 2015 19:08
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 Kovan by alkanphel, on Flickr
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Feb 7, 2016 11:31
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