I never realized I’d love street photography this much
While I love combining a good walk with taking photos, I’m fairly introverted (I even have the t-shirt), so I rarely feature humans in my photos. But what if there were a genre of photography where the point was to capture candid human moments surreptitiously? That I could do. I’ve been training for watching from the fringes my whole life.
I’ve often walked around cities and focused on photos of buildings, cars, the steam coming out of a grate, dumpsters, traffic cones—you get it. While I’m proud of many of these images, the real story is how humans fit into those spaces. So I’ve been practicing capturing moments—as defined by something actually happening in the photo, which usually requires animation of some kind, which in a city usually involves people.
Technically speaking, this—shooting from chest level with my camera on a strap, looking like I was holding my camera but not actually shooting—took some trial and error. I hadn’t used zone focusing before, so it took a bit to dial this in. To get a reasonable depth of field meant I needed to balance the shutter speed with a stopped down aperture (my first day out was almost all motion blurred images). I’m starting get a feel for the right settings, and developing a better shooting technique where I pause—sometimes just a stutter step—to take photos rather than trying to shoot on the move.
The first day I tried this was in New York with a used Fujifilm X100T I’d just picked up from B&H that day. Even though most of my photos that first day were unusable, I was hooked. This is a genre with near unlimited subject possibilities (there are only so many leaves to shoot during my normal walks on our rural dirt road). And it’s a genre that can be practiced in any city or village, wherever people live out their lives.
My second day in NYC was better. Then I came home and walked in Portland, and some of those were good. I went to Boston last weekend expecting to walk there, but the weather was so beautiful, every single person was on the sidewalk and every single parking spot was filled. I ended up shooting no photos at all. Next time I’ll plan that one better (take the train).
When the Fujifilm X100VI became available, I preordered it and returned the X100T, so I’ve been without that perfect little street camera model for a few weeks. The other day in Portland I tried my GFX with its kit lens fixed at 45mm (35mm full frame) to match the focal length of an X100. I set it to manual focus and manual exposure, zone focused to a reasonable distance, and tried my hand with that big, slow, obtrusive beast. The results were not bad! For several reasons (heavy, awkward to creatively/subtlely aim, sometimes slow to fire, loud shutter, weird flaring), that is not how I’d prefer to do street photography, but it works in a pinch. So I captured drunken St Patrick’s Day revelers in glorious medium format, and I’m not sure a single person noticed my camera. Given a more sober day of the year or a less tourist-y area of town (more cameras in general), I’m guessing the GFX would draw more attention.
I have no idea if/when I’ll get my preordered X100VI, but thanks to the brilliant community on Glass, I believe I’ll have a different unit soon. More on that later (hi, Markus!).
There is much talk about the ethics of this genre of photography. I’ll let smarter people hash that out, but my opinion is that if you are of an age of consent and inhabiting a public space, you will be seen—whether in person or via photograph. I don’t post photos of children, and I won’t show the faces of folks who are unhoused or otherwise struggling (exception in this set, there are clearly some drunken folks. Irish celebration will do that.). And there are photos that I may exclude just because they subjectively don’t feel right. Generally speaking, though, I’ll let the law rule here—if it’s viewable in a public space, it’s a potential subject.
Here are some of my favorites from outings in Portland, Maine, and New York, New York.
