On a lunch hour

DavidTO

I managed to get out of the office on an afternoon that people weren't getting shot, and managed to get a couple of shots.

I'm not thrilled with these, but I do want to put my street photography up for criticism.

So here you go.

Bus Stop (this is the intersection where the shootings occurred a few days after this was taken)




Walk By

richardman

These have potentials. Something like #1 can work really well since you have a strong static image. Now all you have to do is to wait for the right counterpoint to show up. The old woman could be it, but something more needs to happen.

Good effort!

DavidTO

richardman wrote: »

These have potentials. Something like #1 can work really well since you have a strong static image. Now all you have to do is to wait for the right counterpoint to show up. The old woman could be it, but something more needs to happen.

Good effort!

Thanks! Good crit.

rainbow

On both these shots the person is subsidiary to the scene, the poster in the first and the grafitti'd wall in the second. Did you find the site and wait for the person? This is one approach to street (and perhaps akin to our moderator, Richard).

A different approach would be to find the interesting person and finding the best angle to shoot the person at that moment. Here you have minimal control of the surroundings as it is not preselected (I tend toward this approach as I cannot see artistic backgrounds no matter what).

So my feedback on these two is that the people are not featured quite enough to give more strength to the shots.

Richard

Glad to see you're giving street shooting a try, David. I'm sure you have lots of material to work with out there.

#1 is the better image of the two, but for this sort of shot to work there needs to be a clear connection between the poster and the person. The connection can take several forms--clear opposites, colors, lines, clear similarities, postures or absurd juxtapositions just to name a few--but without at least one, it becomes a "so what?" shot. I don't see a real connection in this one. As rainbow said, I would have hung around waiting for something more interesting to come along--but then, I don't have to go back to the office.

#2 has a nice gritty urban vibe, but I think you should have focused on the person, not the junk on the left. It also might have been better to get someone more sinister looking (just like thieves), but then you have to be more careful taking photographs of them.

RSL

Good tries, David. All three critics hit it right on the nose. You've got the eye; now you need the background. You might want to study people like Winogrand and Frank to help internalize the kinds of things that work.

DavidTO

Thanks, all for giving so much attention to the n00b!