Digital photography is awesome in many ways, but, for me, the greatest benefit is summed up in one word:
Quantity.
Quantity is awesome. Being able to shoot two hundred photos in a day means that, if you pay attention to your shooting, if you take a moment to compose and breathe and think, you learn fast. You grow fast.
Fig 1
I took this a year ago (more or less). I was shooting , then and now, almost exclusively in Aperture Priority (I’m starting to use Shutter priority in street work now, though). And it’s… kinda pedestrian, tell the truth. In this case, I would honestly acknowledge that it’s the subject and only the subject that saves it.
And I was dogged by exposure problems all day, too:
Fig 2
One year later:
Fig 3
I got better. The exposure problems went away when I figured out how to handle backlight (although that requires a flash and I don’t always work equipped.)
Fig 4
Quantity helps in other ways, too. If you’re willing to throw away 99.9% of your work and only display the very top few images, then being able to shoot a thousand subjects in a month means that you’re capable of outputting a lot more photographs than someone restricted to the rolls of 35mm he can pack into in his pockets.
So in a sense, my improvements largely come from the fact that the camera (previously EP3, now EM5) goes wherever I go, and I mount a fast, workhorse prime on it unless I expect something different, and my only criterion for photographing subjects comes down to “will he/she give me the time of day?” or “is he/she in a public environment and hence reasonably not expecting privacy?”. And I do get a lot of nice pictures, not all of them street photography.
Fig 5
And because I’m willing to fool with stuff that might seem low-odds, I get away with things that photographers with more traditional training might not attempt.
fig 6
And what you get after a thousand photographs a month, ten thousand photographs a year, are habits. Some of them are terrible (chimping took a long time to break, but at least I’m now somewhere in the Neanderthal region), and some of them are neutral.
Fig 7
I’ve been told I still shoot like that, often with my lens cap held in my mouth.
And some of them come in quite helpful.
See, on Sunday we dropped by an event. According to my camera log, we were there for just over one hour from my first photo to my last.
So the first few photos were leisurely done, with me switching out between my workhorse
Fig 8
and my specialist lens,
Fig 9
the latter largely being used for candid shots
Fig 10
and extremely candid shots:
Fig 11
And then Caffeine pointed out that we should be going, and I asked for a few more shots.
All in all, I took over 200 shots. I used to take 500 and keep about a hundred. This time I kept 29. In my defence, about 90 of those 200 shots were burst mode or filter stack shots, which means that I have gone from keeping about 20% of my shots to just under 30%. So quantity is helping, but in the opposite direction: I now shoot less and keep more.
And the last dozen of the shots were all done in exactly the same way:
I’d get deep into the crowd,
Fig 12
and speak to the coser,
Fig 13
and then raise my camera overhead and shoot down
Fig 14
And I shot all of them the same way.
Fig 15
I’m not entirely happy that I’m working this way; as a technician I appreciate that I have a technique that will get me a decent photograph 90% of the time.
But as a photographer, I don’t really feel like taking exactly the same photograph with every shot. I’ll still do it, I think, but I’ll mix in other shots at the same time.
Yes, I am aware that without a proper mobile studio, events and conventions are not always the best places to look for a shot that is both novel and competent.
I.
Fig 16
don’t
Fig 17
believe it
Fig 18
And even if I did… well, I don’t have to care. I have no reputation to preserve. I have no need to watch out for critics who are waiting to pounce on me the moment my skill is less than perfect.
Because I’m nobody.. And that means I have nothing to fear.
And even if you shoot the same way each time and every time, you still, sometimes, get something that surprises you:
Fig 19
*the ethics of street photography still confuse me
Images:
Fig 1: Cosplayer is Celine Chan. I forget the series. Image from ACM 2013; full album here
Fig 2: Khymichi as Sheryl Nome. (same event as above)
Fig 3: Khymichi as Sheryl Nome again; this time I photographed her candidly mid-performance. Image from AFA 2014; full album here
Fig 4: Li Yan as Ciel Phantomhive (same event as above)
Fig 5: Naoko Lee as… er, not sure, but I do believe it’s from Black Butler, which is not about race and slavery at all. Image from SCC Jojo Party
Fig 6: Kaylie Loi, random tea party shoot
Fig 7: Me on Sports Day. Photograph by Chan Wayde
Fig 8: The Jokumi, as Makoto Shishio.at Capital of Cosplay
Fig 9: Arisa, as… a… mascot… (same event as above)
fig 10: Flourite Roses and Melanie Joanne in performance (same event)
fig 11: Reed Yoshitake Gray; Tokyo Ghoul. (same event)
Fig 12: Flourite and Melanie, again (same event)
Fig 13: Er. Dunno, by dunno. (same event)
Fig 14: Skyy Sia, cosing… some hunk from Free.
Fig 15: Nekomaster Isatu Chan Megatsu and someone I haven’t added yet on account of losing my namecard box for a couple of days. (same event)
Fig 16: Tokito Lovesanime Ichinose as a Miku. I shot this from a low angle to emphasise the posture. (same event as fig 5)
Fig 17: Christy Bell and REal Teo… er, I’m not sure of the details. (same event as Fig 5
Fig 18: Jaye Tempest as Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite. (image from STGCC2014
Fig 19: Xueling as Elsa, from the same Jojo fest.
Loading comments...