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Monday 18 June 2012

Street Snippets - Blending in

This is just a quick thought that I'm putting out there.

For street photography all the advice you'll read suggests that you should blend in to your environment. So dress appropriately i.e. if you're somewhere 'touristy' dress like all the other tourists and if you're in a more urban environment go for 'street casual'' and don't stand out too much.

This technique promises a more stealthy approach where you can hopefully shoot some great candid images without alerting your prey, this is currently the advice I follow myself.

However I was in Stratford-upon-Avon a while ago and there was a guy walking around with a huge video camera strapped on to his shoulder, like a proper full on professional video camera. He was a big tall guy and he was just walking around capturing street scenes. He wasn't interacting with anyone or taking interviews and the strange thing was that no one paid him any attention at all, not even glancing at him. He was this huge unusual presence on the street and I was getting more attention than him with my little Pentax camera.



Didn't get an image of the cameraman so here's a big fairy instead


So this got me thinking, if I went completely the other way and dressed as a professional photographer with an ID tag hanging around my neck would I be able to attain this mysterious 'cloaking' the video man achieved?

I haven't tried I yet, but I will and I'll let you know how I get on.


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4 comments:

georg said...

Very interesting observation. Btw nice blog. Unusual topics. I like it.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your comment...it's early days and plenty of room for improvement, so keep checking back.

dimension2 said...

Interesting topic. There are a lot of medium and large format camera users there carrying old clunky cameras and are yet able to get candid street shots. Some believe in lingering around an area long enough that people ignore their presence after a point, and that's when they make their images. I guess both approaches have their place in street photography.

Nice blog, btw. Keep the updates coming.

Unknown said...

Thanks for your comment dimension2, the lingering around approach is one I must discipline myself to try. I tend to be a 'shoot and move' photographer and I'm sure I'm missing out on some shots working this way.

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