street markets, there a brilliant place to practice street photography,
and we know that this is a very very popular genre because
of the number of requests asking about street photography.
now it can be a bit of a scary thought to wander around in public, with your
cameras
taking photographs of complete strangers because some of them aren't gonna like that
one of the most important things is that you feel good about yourself in doing it
you've got to be confident, you've gotta kind of
own the right to be there, and you've also gotta be able to interact with the people
and the environment.
now, there are three different types of photograph, which make up street photography
in my mind
you've got the inanimate objects
you've got some ketchup bottles over there next to the burger van
you're
gonna have coats hanging on racks, you're gonna have people selling
vegetables
those are all inanimate objects which can make a some
really good pictures, and if you get some people in the background
so much better
but those are inanimate things, they say, street market or
still life
then you have the traders themselves these people come here week after
week
you can get to know them, you can be
friend then
you can get them to start to trust you
so you could say spend some time in one place such as this guys burger van, shelleys
snacks,
i could spend time there, maybe an hour or so
just photographing him, his customers and life as it happens around his van,
now, that's probably the easiest way to break into working with people in an street market
because you've only got one main person to deal with, because if they're ok with it, chances are
there customers will be too.
then of course you have the on the huff stuff,
you might have someone walking up the street laden with shopping complete
strangers you've had no contact with them at all, but you know it might make a great picture.
or of someone buying a cup of tea, or a burger or someone discussing something with a trader
or lugging some furniture up the street, as we bumped into someone doing just
that earlier
all these things make great pictures
so what we're doing this film is start looking at the inanimate objects that
can take you through what i'm doing and why i'm doing it .
You can watch is i start to interact with some of the stall holders and get
their permission and make sure that they're happy for me to do things
now it's really important not t get in the way of store holders, because these guys are here to make money, they're here to
work, and earn a living
so let's have a go, i mentioned those tomato ketchup's
and things like that, i'm going to go and give it a lash.
no no no, i'm going to talk to you about cameras, sorry i completely forgot about that bit.
what am i going to use for my street photography?
now my favorites are wide-angled lenses, i love the intimatecy
and going very close to someone with a wide-angle lens lens
so i've got one of my
camera bodies set up,
with my ten to twenty mill zoom.
so that means i can get very close, in and among-st the action.
there's another reason for wanting to do that, particularly when people are concered
i think it's better to be up front about what you're doing
and say this is why i'm here, this is what i'm doing, do you mind?
and be in and among the action with a wide lens
than t is to be hiding behind a wall,
peeking around the corner with a long lens
because you'll look kind of sneeky
and in these days, there's sort of
concerns over photographs of children, ect like that, there is
a pretty good chance the police might be called, in fact if we were called on, like
Jane and myself a couple of years ago doing some secret film for a filming for a television program a couple of years ago,
having said that, i have got my long lens on,
this is one of the rare occasions in one of my films were i'm using
uh... F2.8 professional lens
this is where the kit can make a difference
because
i don't know what's going to be happening
with street photography the lights going to be changing all that sort of stuff
so i am going to use this lens because it has a very wide aperture
that means i'm less likely to get camera shake
at a high shutter speed with a low lens
i'm carrying with me a mid range lens as well
but for most the time i want to try in work
with my wide angle
because that kind of, i dunno,
it gives me that intimacy that i like.
let's go and have a look at those ketchup and things over there,.
i also have one big tactical error going on here
because
a) i keep dropping litter everywhere and
b) i haven't got a coat which i
can put my lens i comfortably and easily
and so i can get at it quickly
that was a mistake to come out doing that, your best of with a baggy old jacket
i wouldn't recommend carrying a camera bag
because one you can't move particularly quickly
and two
there we go, you can see we're having problems already
and three
fiddling around with a camera bag isn't necessary
a good idea.
but you cant take an eye of your bag and leave it in the street, because someone is going to
possibly walk of with it
tea over
let's have a look
now i kinda like
all this sort of
ketchup-y stuff going on you know with the
burger van in the background
so what am i going to do? well i want a wide angle shot, of the street
and the burger stand with some of these people
we also sort of want
some of this sort of
stuff here
going on in the foreground
big and strong
i'm going to try a bit of different options
i'm going to use quite a bit of depth of field, does it need more or less?, i'm going to play around with it as i do
it.
my iso, i will have to set to four hundred, don't get scared by highering iso speeds
because
if there's a bit of grain in there
it's better to have the grain and a sharp image than
it is to have a fine-grained blurted image.
not only that, but life can get a bit grainy at times can't it, but don't be afraid to push your ISO up a bit
with my short lens it doesn't matter so much what my shutter
speed is
because i'm never going to need anything faster than a twentieth
because it's a twenty mil lens
let's have a look at this shot here, so let's have a look, oh i like that already.
i got that straight away, straight out the bag, i love that
we got these
these these sources
here busy, we got the guy on the phone, we got the.. the burger van going on
in the background
let's just get on in, a little bit closer to these. Another great thing with wide angled lens is
people often look at you as you take pictures
and not realize that they're in the shot, i really like that and that's a really documentary still
life
another approach to these could be with the long lens
let's just swap over and see what we can come up with
but to do that I've got to be much much further away,
for my subject matter
than i am now , and i'm not altogether certain that it'll
work. Let's see.
i did quite like this kind of you know
this messy stuff round the table
if you're after some source mate, that's fine you can carry on. no worries at all
but in fact i might take a picture of you doing it if you don't mind?
aw, good good, look at these men doing the sauces, marvelous, thanks
mate.
aw that's cool.
don't be afraid to speak to people too. most people are alright as i say, you've got to own the right to be there.
the shot i'm interested in is looking between these bottle tops with the ketchup
and the stuff on the top
so i'm using the long lens
wide aperture F2.8 and i'm just focusing on
the ketchup bottle.
look at that. love it, that's
very street market-y.
we got the tomatoes sauce kind of congealing around the top.
lot's of people have been putting it on their burgers and stuff like that.
i think that's really cool
this is where the long lens can come in really really handy, it's very good at isolating things.
with a short aperture that means there's a shallow depth of field which will photograph
those details.
i'm also kind of glancing around,
because i don't know what's going to happen next, and i know i'm supposed to be doing inanimate objects and a must try and concentrate but
i can get carried away with this because i love photographing people.
i'm also just looking up on the stand here,
on the burger van, look at those eggs,
those eggs are interesting.
we're just going to take a shot through here
because they're eggs
do you mind if i photograph your eggs mate?
haha, that's very kind, thank you.
look at that, this is really cool. again the longer lens
is brilliant for this sort of thing.
look at that.
we're just kind of looking through
at those eggs, just sort of peeking out.
i think that's quite cool,
it's kind of market-y still life, it kind of fits the sequence around
the burger van,
i could spend an hour here, and we will come back another day,
i want to spend more time here