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Sunday summer evening in Shanghai
michswiss
Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,235 Major grins
This is a series I took last Sunday evening at a park across from where I live. I was walking back from dinner and had my camera with me with the 50/1.4 attached which is my weekend habit if I'm just running errands (I don't like talking about kit, but this is one of those times that I love my primes. So elemental.)
In any case, I spent about 45 minutes sitting and watching and managed to get a few decent shots. It was hot, around 36-37 degrees C, so people were out strolling, chatting, interacting and watching the informal entertainment.
In any case, I spent about 45 minutes sitting and watching and managed to get a few decent shots. It was hot, around 36-37 degrees C, so people were out strolling, chatting, interacting and watching the informal entertainment.
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I'm going to take a chance and assume that you want real criticism, and not just 'ow wow, great shot.' And I'm going to make that assumption because I've now seen your interesting numbers project, and know that you have a good eye, and are serious about your photography. So...here goes...
I think you need to think a bit more about what you're shooting and why you're shooting it.
The first is a little muddled - a guy toe walking on skates. Okay. Now what? And is his hand on that pole? No?
The second is the best in the batch - except for the fact that the point of focus seems to be the white cone on the ground, rather than the faces of the women watching. This should be about the expressions of the observers, not the cone.
The third?...
The fourth? Same problem as the second.
The fifth and sixth? I can see what you were playing with, but I don't think it worked in terms of producing images to show...
One of the biggest problems with shooting on the street is that we often think that anything slightly out of the ordinary that occurs is worth shooting - and once shot, worth showing. And neither of those things is true. The fact that something occurs in public doesn't necessarily make it interesting...It's a hot summer night, a guy is skating, people are watching. Okay, but so what? Photography is a visual medium. For a photo to be interesting - as anything other than proof that an even occurred - it has to be visually interesting in some way.
Does any of that make sense?
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Makes absolute sense and I truly appreciate the feedback. No excuses on my part, and I agree with your comments on the individual shots. One of the reasons I've stopped taking pictures of flowers, trees, boats, bikes, skateboarders, or any number of subjects unless I had a very specific objective in mind.
In this case, I'd had dinner and I had my camera and it was dusk and I didn't want to head straight home. I've been working on improving some techniques including low light action shots and "hip-shooting" or not using the viewfinder to minimise drawing attention to myself. I'm trying to train myself to be able to "see" the composition without having to bring the camera to my eye.
That's a great objective - but an even better one would be to get comfortable enough in your photographer skin to use the camera properly and bring it to your eye and really frame the shots worth making. You will find that if you can learn to move around unobtrusively, keep your camera at chest level or higher so that you don't have to make a major motion - from waist to eye - every time you shoot, people won't pay much attention to you and you can shoot the way you want to.
But again, being able to hipshoot and actually know in advance roughly what you're going to get is a valuable skill.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed