Market Night

Smithy

Here in Redlands, every Thursday evening is Market Night... they block off several blocks of a downtown street and open it to vendors and foot traffic. Had dinner down there with a friend, enjoyed some live music, and took a few pics. Enjoy.

thoth

The hardest part of street photography, for me at least, is actually seeing something interesting to take a picture of. When I am on the street and don't find interesting things I end up 'taking what I can get' and just shoot. That's part of the growing process but, unfortunately, doesn't always yield good results.

Numbers two, four and five appear to be 'taking what you could get' to me. Yes they are pictures on the street and yes it was important to take them but there's little of interest in them. They are just people in the same ol' grind that we would see had we walked down that street on that night.

Number one, though, is a moment that the casual observer would have missed as they walked by. This man, bored to death and being out-marketed by a slinky woman and flashy lights is interesting. The composition of the shot is pretty darn good and I am enjoying looking at it.

Keep up the good work!

michswiss

For some reason, I get the feeling that everything in this set was taken from the same height. Yours. When I'm in an 'ordinary' setting, I try to imagine where the camera should be versus where my noggin is. I then try to figure out how to get my eye to join the camera.

I think some of these images could be really interesting if the camera's perspective were different.

Smithy

Thank you both for your comments.

I agree, it was kinda "what looks interesting out here?" There was a horse/carraige, but the driver was clearly not happy about me taking his picture, even though it was the most visually interesting shot of the night.

The guy dozing at the stand is priceless. But I think it's a mannequin in the background, in a store window... not another salesperson.

I loved the look of the two guys in the booth, but that's just the appeal of their expressions for me... nothing much else to the picture.


Michswiss, how do you generally go about getting "the different angle"? I'm intrigued by the idea, but I'm not sure how to proceed... do you have any techniques you can share?

lizzard_nyc

Hi Smithy,
Welcome to this forum.
I'm not answering for Michswiss--but you asked about the different angles.
Look at Michswiss' post of today the title is "one from 22 November"--The action is going on at nearly floor level and she got waaaay down to get that shot---otherwise if shot from a regular standing position we'd just have the tops of heads...

michswiss

Smithy wrote:

Thank you both for your comments.

...

Michswiss, how do you generally go about getting "the different angle"? I'm intrigued by the idea, but I'm not sure how to proceed... do you have any techniques you can share?

Smithy,

My general rule of thumb is to have the camera at essentially the same level as the primary subject. If it's a kid, get to kid height. Dogs, cats, same thing. I also find taking shots of adults around the midriff changes my perception of them. Additionally, I sometimes want to shoot with a 'camera up' or 'camera down' angle and that might affect where I want to be as a starting point.

I'll also often just sit down in the middle of a busy sidewalk, on a chair, on the curb and just take in the environment for 10-15 minutes before even putting the camera to my eye. But other than that, just experiment.

bdcolen

Smithy wrote:

Here in Redlands, every Thursday evening is Market Night... they block off several blocks of a downtown street and open it to vendors and foot traffic. Had dinner down there with a friend, enjoyed some live music, and took a few pics. Enjoy.

I hate to be discouraging, but...These are nice tries, and you did well dealing with the very challenging night street lighting. The problem is that there's not much of anything in the photos. I know Travis liked #1, but I think there's something important that one lacks - a dog. One way to think about this is to imagine each of these photos taken at high noon. Ask yourself if you'd have taken them, and if you had, why would you? The goal of shooting this kind of thing at night isn't to have a photo that says 'taken at night,' but rather a photo that you look at and say, 'wow' - for whatever reason.

But all of that said, keep shooting - you're doing well with the technical elements - now just find something to apply them to.

Smithy

Again, thank you all for the comments. I am extremely new at this, so you're not hurting any feelings by telling me what's not in the picture... but ya gotta start somewhere, and for me, that means getting out and shooting.