OCCUPY: The last few days (11 images)

michswiss

Too many images to put in a single post, so I'd encourage you to look at the gallery. I'm also interested in comments on the full set in terms of capturing a protest / rally. First time attempting something on this scale. I'm still planning on editing down to a concise set of the people in the working group I'd been following once events slow down. I'll also post some of the human / humorous stuff later.


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Richard

I looked at your gallery and liked it a lot, Jenn. I think you did a fine job of showing the individuals, their interactions and the larger scene. There are far too many to comment on individually, but in general I like the narrow DOF and wide angle up close, though in a few cases the distortion didn't work for me.

From my own experience in the Madrid demonstrations last summer, I'd say that the biggest challenge is culling, not shooting. Cameras are omnipresent, so in general nobody pays too much attention to you while you're working. I took over a thousand frames during the three months that it lasted here and never once had any issue. Between the colorful characters, the infrastructure of tents and computers, the police, the banners and signs, the animated discussions and the boring tedium as the days go by, there's an abundance of photo ops. The problem is really selecting the ones to show. I think that as long as you touch on all the elements, it's hard to go wrong. You just have to resist the impulse to show them all, good as they may be.

One of the newspapers here did something similar to the Kyle Cassidy slide show that BD linked to. It was a set of portraits done on site with minimal portable studio lighting, but instead of using computer text, the photographer got the subjects to write their statements on paper, which he then scanned. Seeing the handwriting made it seem more personal and immediate, and I think that made it more effective.

richardman

I echo what Richard said. Also, seems like you are using an ultra wide? That can be very effective, but you have to watch out for distortions that don't work. For example, #7 just gives a big view of... protesters sides and backs while making the police and surrounding far away. IMHO, that's not a successful picture. I was in NY for 5 days and the first day I used an super wide (21mm) and it was a disaster, so I backed off and used a 35mm and up. The other thing is how do you find focus with so many things going on. I cheated and just shot wide open a lot because I know that will get me the effect that would look decent. If you shoot with greater DoF, then you need to get the interesting shots among the chaos. For example, with the first pic, I would keep shooting until someone, probably the two people closest in the front, do something interesting.

Good luck!

M38A1

From a beginners perspective, I find the use of the ultra-wide informative as much as the prior two posts regarding it's use. The shots show what can be done with one and were deemed to be worthy of posting and the comments are an opinion as to what might have been done differently. That's what makes this sub-forum so cool.

As for the images, I really like the emotion of #2 captured. He almost looks like one of the 'suits' everyone is rallying against. And #4 with all it's colors is a really nice capture and framing to show the 'night time' aspect. Finally, #7 is just nicely framed/captured showing the bus driver looking forward, intent on whatever he's intent on and the movement of the officers just works for me.

michswiss

Thanks for the thoughtful comments Scott, Richard, and Richard. Thanks again as well for taking a look in the gallery. I shot with a mix of lenses and a couple of cameras over the five days. Some of it was with a 17-35 that I opened up on occasion. I don't like the edge distortion either, but it was sometimes a choice between getting the comp I wanted with something (or someone) on the edge or cutting things off. I'll probably only use a limited number of those in the final cull. I had a PM as well that suggested I'd gone for too many mob scenes. I probably did include too many of those in this post, but I felt it was important to at least get them and then only use one or two as context builders.

The group (many hundreds) reconvened in my neighbourhood, not far from my apartment, yesterday for a day march and protest. But I didn't have the energy to spend any time at the scene. I've been down to shoot the cordoned-off square of the original protest today. Some ironic "maintenance" signs around the fence line. The whole thing might start up again next week in a different location. If so, I'll try to continue following the working group I started with last Monday.

Thanks again for the feedback.

bdcolen

2-5-11 :-)