UNIT 3 - AO2 - CLOSE UPS

One of the defining things with some street photographers is their use of close up photography with the public on the street, in the 40s and 50s during the golden age of street photography (40s - 60s) most photographers used Medium Format Twin-Lens-Reflex (TLR) cameras which were big and would often have to be accompanied with a flash which many photographers whom believe that this approach is aggressive, in-your-face, confrontational and all-out-ballsy style of street photography. Though photographers such as Bruce Gilden (Top Right) & Charlie Kirk, manage to pull the technique off. Probably the most Iconic Medium formatt, non-flash, street shooter would probably be Vivian Maier who shot over 150,000 rolls of medium format film on her TLR (Twin-Lens-Reflex) camera, managed to capture impressive close up street photos of the general public (Fig,2). However - I Digress, The reason why I mention this is because they all manage to capture photographs of people close-up.

So In this AO2 project I set out to to try and produce a series of street photographs with the key theme being close up and try and test out methods from well-established street photographers like Vivian Maier or Bruce Gilden.

Things to do:

- Shoot using high-ish shutterspeed

- to capture the moment and save any risk of motion blur.

- Shoot in black and white

- For obvious reasons to help try and relate work to street photographers.

- Shoot subjects within the corners of the center third of the frame.

After one afternoon this is what I produced:

Vincent..

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Things that I learned:

- Shoot with higher apertures

- Street photography is all about confidence.

- In a street photography I picked up in London theres a section on peoples reactions to having there photographs taken on the street and before I did this shoot I was often terrified about possibly getting shouted at or in trouble. But this qoute really helped me get pass this anxiety: "You cannot do street photography if you are anxious about people's reaction"

- With taking close up pictures, one can walk up to someone, look down onto the screen/viewfinder then look at the subject and take the shot (when you look at the person, they'll look back at your face and therefore you get to keep their emotional reaction to the photograph taken and not look directly at the camera)

With these notes I shall try and encorporate them within future work.