Rodney Campbell's Blog

Week 10

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NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 300 mm, 1/640 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 400

Check

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 95 mm, 1/640 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 400

A Diptych with a happier theme than my first street photography diptych last week – created from some images I took in Sydney’s Pitt St Mall. I watched this couple watching some street dance performers and the young lady was at times acting the part and they were joking, smiling, laughing and generally having a great time 🙂

Smile

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 195 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 400

Week 9

Deep in Thought

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 220 mm, 1/800 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 400

I’ve decided to take up the 52/2011 challenge for this year. The idea of which is to undertake a year long challenge and post at least a photo a week on a particular topic or theme.

For my challenge I’d already been thinking back in January about getting out of my comfort zone and practicing a style of photography known as “Street Photography”. Some of you are probably already aware I’ve essentially been trying this since the start of the year however I’m going to more formalise it through the 52/2011 and keep the flow (and hopefully growth) in one thread.

I work in Sydney’s CBD so this location should hopefully provide a wealth of early morning, lunchtime and late afternoon subject matter for those times I can get out to try my hand.

One possible misconception is that street photography is the photographing of empty streets – perhaps a better term for this class of photography would be social, ‘in the moment’ or ‘real life reportage’ photography – it’s photographing people in their natural environments.

Street photography seems to have had a bit of a resurgence lately and apparently 🙂 it can be quite exciting – you can go around in public and take pictures of (gasp) strangers!

For me I see a few main areas of potential growth for myself including:
– the obvious things like ability to compose and shoot quickly, to look and notice more about whats going on around me, to see and anticipate ‘moments’, train the eye, camera handling and familiarity – all useful skills for most other photographic disciplines
– post processing skills – as I’ll be processing most images to monochrome there are many and varied techniques and “looks” for doing this
– overcoming shyness, building the self confidence to eventually walk up to strangers and (ask!! to) take their photo
– patience 🙂

I hope by the end of the year to be comfortable in both main approaches to street photography: Candid – capturing the moment spontaneously, without asking subjects to pose for you and without them being aware of you doing so and Conversational – where you engage the subject beforehand, striking up a conversation, getting to know them and their personality and asking their permission before taking any photos.

My aim is to post at least a couple images a week for your viewing pleasure/comment/criticism or even unrestrained laughter 🙂

A few more street photography images from some lunchtime sessions in the city – whereas most of my other street images were taken with a wide angle lens (17-50mm) I thought I’d try going out with a long lens (my Nikon 70-300mm which is a very nice and sharp lens, however it isn’t anywhere near as fast as my f/2.8 lens). It’s interesting being forced to take all shots using just the one lens and with street photography you wouldn’t get the chance to change lenses anyway before the moment is lost. You have to move around a lot more to prepare for and compose your shots.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

I saw these three characters together waiting at the intersection on the other side of the road so I waited till they started crossing towards me and…

Rockin’ the Sixties

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 200

These shoes were just artsy indulgence but I also really liked them from the moment I saw them walking down the street – I was just glad she had to stop at the lights which gave me time to shoot

Standing

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/80 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 400

This last is a Diptych of two images taken of a gentleman down on his luck keeling right on on the kerb on the corner of George and Park streets in front of the Queen Victoria Building

Please

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 240 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 400