The new street photographer's manifesto

During the trip to Bradford I purchased a few things from the shop they had there, these were a photography journal, a picture and Tanya Nagar's book 'The new street photographers manifesto'. 

Tanya Nagar's book is a really interesting book, i originally purchased it so it could give me in-sight into street photography but through reading it i discovered it has much more to it. It shows you in detail what street photography actually is, the history of street photography, street photography today, the mind of a street photographer and also whole chapters on 'where and what to shoot', 'seize the moment', 'equipment', 'digital processing' and 'showcase'.

The main part of the book i liked was how so explains in-depth what the mind of a street photographer is like, it helps you fully understand how they work and also it tells you what you need to do and what you need to achieve to be a successful street photographer. 

I think this is a really good book for aspiring street photographers to read because it explains every aspects of the style of photography and it would help them out a hell of a lot, i don't have a bad word to say about this book. 

Tanya Nagar

I couldn't find a lot about Tanya Nagar on the internet so i managed to find a few facts about her in her book.

Tanya in known on the internet as 'Tanya-N' and her website is 'www.tanya-n.com if you wish to go check out her work. Tanya has won numerous awards for her street photography. Her passion for street photography stems from a deep interest in human psychology and culture.

Many say she has a distinctive urban eye, she has the ability to home in to her surroundings to capture the best shots and to notice the slightest thing that you and i many not always notice. 

She has been photographing the streets of London and Mumbai for years. This is what got her noticed and ultimately lead to her work being widely published, and seen BBC and CNN.

The mind of a photographer

The thing Tanya mainly discuss' in this section of the book is 'conquer your fear'. I think this is a good tip to be perfectly honest. I myself have an issue with fear of taking photo's of strangers.

I really like how she break's it down and talks about it in a different way that is easier to understand. Tanya said to think about photography as hunting. That you, the 'street photographer' is the hunter and the 'decisive moment' is like capturing the prey.

She puts it like that because a hunter has no time to hesitate if they want there prey and this is very much the same for a street photographer, you cannot hesitate because you will almost definitely miss the moment you wanted to capture. 

Tanya also in this section advised you to smile. She says as this is simple gesture of kindness it almost instantaneously defuses any hostility between you and any person who is unhappy with you taking photos of them or others. I also thought this was a really good tip because many people just don't know what to do in rather hostile situations.

To sum up

I would highly recommend this book to any aspiring street photographers. It helps you a hell of a lot in understanding it as a form of photography.

Digital shots.

Testing myself.

I decided that before going out with my 35mm camera i wanted to test myself using my digital SLR to see how nervous i was to start taking photo's of complete strangers in the street and also to see how close i  could get. This was just so i could find my feet with this style of photography and not waste any films on the rubbish shots i could be getting with being nervous and scared, so i used today as a confidence booster and i actually figured out that i am more confident than i thought.

I started to become way more observant and i found myself noticing things in the street that i have never really noticed before. And i actually got really into it and only took a small amount of shots with my digital camera before going straight onto my 35mm. 

I have a few shots that turned out okay and i wanted to just share them with you all.

 
 These are the only three i liked that i got because i found that most of the time i was taking the shots way to far away. But i do feel that towards the end i started to get a lot more closer to the subject as you can see in the three images i chose. I still do feel that i could get even closer if i pushed myself to do so. 

#Phonar Task

 

Previous work.

Previous work

A little before i started at CCAD i did a photo shoot with my friend out in the streets granted they are not candid shots but i feel some of them do give of a bit of a street photography style so i'm just going to include them in this blog as examples of my work.

This image is one of many, it took me a while to achieve what i wanted to with the focus in this shot. Its only slight but the arm is the subject in this photo and is in focus more so than the rest of the body and the background. I liked this because of the contrast between the different focus'. I thought this kind of fitted the street photography project because well one it's out in the street, in a public place but also someone passing you or someone else something in the street can happen quite a lot, and although it is staged and i asked him to do this it still to me has an urban and street photography feel.

This images looks a lot less staged and i felt that in this image the how he is stood is something that you could actually find in a street anywhere in the world. People staring, and people smoking in the street is something that happens every minute of every day. In this i liked how he is leaning forward as though he is trying to look right down the street and the smirk he has on his face would make you wonder what he was looking at and thinking about if you were the viewer of the photograph. It gives gives the photo a mystery feel to its audience and it leaves them thinking and wondering. 

This photo does look really staged but i felt this is an expression you could find in the street with almost anyone, and the way he looks off camera makes you think about what he could be looking at and his expression makes you make an assumption whether the thing he is looking at is good, bad, interesting or intriguing.
I really like the use of facial expressions in street photography because i really like giving the viewer of my photo's that mystery feel that makes them have to write there own conclusion on what was happening in the surroundings where the image was taken, and i feel most, if not all photographers want this too for the viewers of their photo's.

These photo's were taken using a Nikon D3100 digital SLR.
I edited them on Adobe Photoshop by converting them over to black and white, and messing with contrast and shadows. I darkened the shadows slightly in all three images and them upped the contrast slightly just to give the black, grey and white tones a sharper look so they weren't so soft. 

what street photography means to me.

What is street photography?

Street photography is a form of photography that usually features images of people in candid situations within the realms of public places, and despite the name of this style of photography, it does not necessarily need to be in the street. It could be in a taxi, bus, train or even a public building. The street literally just means a place in which human activity can be seen and a place where human interaction can be captured. This could be as simple as two people walking beside one another to a teddy bear left behind on the side of the road. 

What i believe about street photography

I believe that the key aspect you will need to be a street photographer is timing. Timing 

is ultimately everything.

Street photography is like living in the moment. You have to walk about and take photo's of things around you purely on instinct, without thought. 

There will be times where there will be something amazing happening and if you haven't got your camera there and ready you will miss it and this will be really frustrating, you need to be on the ball all the time. Constantly looking and observing your surroundings so that the majority of those moments will not be missed. 

The timing you have when taking a photo can be the decider between whether you capture that moment or not. You could press the shutter at the exact moment the event happens which would be ideal or you could capture the moment before or just after, again this will be very frustrating.

Similar Genres

It has been known that street photography and documentary photography have been compared and are both very similar. The obvious difference being that in street photography you are purely doing it for the purpose of documenting whereas in documentary photography you are doing it to record history and historical events. 

Street photography was at its peak in the 19th century, although many did not know they were street photographers at the time. The majority of people thought they were documenting history (documentary photographer), but in actual fact they were taking candid shots in the street.

Examples of street photography

I've collected some images just to show as an example, I typed 'street photography' into Google images to see what it would come up with and I tried to get three very different images to analyse before I went onto researching photographers.

Image one:

I chose this image because I really liked the way there is a man really close to the lens. Maybe as close as 30 cm away who is blurred, yet there is a women in the background who is almost perfectly in focus. I though it was a really good use of focus in the image.

Image two:

I chose this image because it was completely different to the first image. As street photography is mainly people in a street or a public place its refreshing to see a form of street photography that has an aspect of human life, (in this case the bike) but showing no actual people, I feel its a different way of looking at street photography. Furthermore, I like how the background has a graffiti feel to it, as this is also showing human life without having people in the shot.

Image three:

This is the last image I chose for my blog post. I thought the image was really interesting because you didn't know why this woman had a hoover. Whether she bought it just now or whether she was dropping it off at a friends house or any other scenario you could think of. 

Another thing I liked was how it was in color and how the photographer uses it. Whether the photographer realised it at the time or after or not at all, I think it's really good how the woman instantly stands out. This is because her surroundings are bland only containing browns, blacks and grey's but she has a bag that is bright red and also the hoover is bright red. I think this makes your eyes immediately draw into the center of the image where she is walking.