Really, how do you photograph people on the street without them getting upset?
Street photography is a trendy genre of photography, most people who have a camera in their hand press the shutter release when they are on the streets. Amateurs and professionals, but, our discussion is about amateurs.
The inspiration for this question and this post came to me after seeing @ewkaw's recent post, which you can also see here: Don't shoot the face!
I like to photograph on the street and I have at least two good reasons for doing so. Because I live in a big city and if I couldn't photograph on the street I would miss more than half of the possible subjects and secondly, because I like to travel... and when I travel I spend most of my time on the streets.
Probably everyone has a method of photographing strangers on the street so as not to disturb or invade their privacy. Although privacy is at home, when we are on the street is something else entirely.
The first method is the one suggested by @ewkaw, of photographing subjects from behind without them seeing that they are being photographed. It's also the method I'm trying to use myself and I even wrote about it a few months ago. The point in that post was that even the image of people's backs has some significance... The human with his back
My method for quietly photographing people from all positions without them getting upset is this...
I'm looking for a place where many people are gathered together
Best when there are street performances
The most important is that people are busy and their attention is directed away from the photographer's location.
The photos used here are taken during a street theatre festival, in Bucharest, in June 2023.
One of the performances was aerial acrobatics in which huge amounts of coloured paper were thrown over the spectators.
It's incredible what a few colored papers could do.
They turned all the people into children!
So a mixed, moving, happy crowd can be compared to the fish in the ocean and the photographer to a shark!
I took all the pictures with my smartphone. I got ready for this day of the street show, charged the camera battery because I was expecting to take hundreds of photos, and... forgot to put it back in the camera.
Can you imagine my amazement and annoyance when I tried to take the first picture and the camera was lifeless?
Once again my smartphone saved me. It's our incredible chance now to have a camera wherever we go.
This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.
