Last Saturday when we left the Belfast Exposed building to take some shots around Smithfield I really felt out of my depth. There were 11 of us out with our cameras and I could see the difference between someone like me who struggled to get any good portraits compared with some of the more forward of the bunch. One guy in particular called Martin, captures some excellent pictures, both candid and posed. Here is an example of the different mindset between him and myself.
We both walked into the market and our objective was to take a picture of an old lady. I immediately spotted a woman who looked to be in her 80's sitting at a table outside a cafe and I was building up the courage to walk over and ask if I could take her picture. I milled about taking pictures of other shop fronts and while I was procrastinating, Martin spotted her, walked straight up and just said few words. She smiled and 'snap snap snap', "thanks very much", he got the shot.
It took me a while to eventually ask someone to take their picture, which I did, but I still felt sort of embarrassed at my lack of confidence. I could have done the same as Martin and got the picture, but I didn't.
Anyway, today I took to the city centre and decided that I would just get on with it. I used mostly the new Tamron that I bought, and my thinking was that if I'm struggling to speak to people before I take their picture, why not just go for the more candid approach. Besides, I think this style of photography tells more of a story (he tries to convince himself).
Instead of just dandering around snapping whatever I saw, on the advice of Chris our tutor, I actually made a list of images that I wanted to capture before I left the house. I had been thinking about it since Monday and just wrote down what I thought would be good to tell a story.
- Someone on the phone
- Litter on the ground
- People queueing at the bus stop
- Pottingers Entry
It was strange how simply by trying to visualise the images before I took them it made a difference to the quality of the pictures I got. Not in the sense of sharpness and focus, but the actual composition and what was in the frame. I felt like I was trying to build a story of images instead of what I usually do, which is photograph what is immediately in front of me.
My project is Street Photography (funnily enough), and although this isn't something that I would like to do at a professional level, I feel that it is something that will build up my ability in general. If I can take good quality photos of people on the street who are just going about their business and not waiting for me to capture them perfectly, then when it comes to creating posed portraits for the likes of a wedding album, using the camera will be second nature. All of my attention can be focused on the subject.
That's it for now, I'm uploading the images I've captured today to Lightroom then I'm going back out in the afternoon. I have to present 6 to 8 images for the project, so when I have decided on the group I'll get them uploaded.
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