Overview
Last week, I noticed that there was a lot of construction work going on outside my compound, so on Saturday morning I took my camera out to practice street photography.
- Work the scene and take multiple iterations of a single subject/scene
- Eye contact
- The decisive moment
- Capture gestures
- get close (1 arm length)
- Fishing – don’t move
I tried to do a bit of each technique but was unable to fish. There were 2 reasons why: first of all, I was mostly standing on the roadside so I couldn’t just stand on a road; also, because I wasn’t in a crowded area, when I stood anywhere too long while holding my camera up I got weird looks.
I actually managed to get permission from a couple people to take their photos (besides the guy smoking and the people sitting at the roadside, the other few subjects were pretty happy to let me take pictures for school photography).
Lessons Learnt
- LOW ISO HELPS MAKE PICTURES LESS GRAINY
- Shot length of about 1/250 is actually ok for street photography (I had it on like, 1/2000 before this)
- Most people don’t really mind you taking pictures if you explain that you’re doing it for a school project and you’re not trying to get them in trouble
- the construction workers are not going to start taking their construction equipment and chase you down while yelling curse words in Chinese
Final Product
