Of all styles of photography, one that I never dared practise is street photography.

I do like the truth captured in the pictures though. The spontaneity of people, the lack of light setup, everything is real and truly illustrates the society that the photographer decided to capture.
It is however very difficult to isolate the right element in the frame of the camera which will transform a mere snapshot into a nice photograph, and above all, do everything without being intrusive to the people you photograph.

lady by the escalatorMy first attempt is a photograph of a young lady sitting by the escalator in an old building in Shinjuku, late at night.
I didn’t especially expect to see her face so clearly, but she turned around right when I took the picture and after all, I’m glad she did: I like the expression on her face, a mixture of surprise and boredom.

Hoping that I will be able to take more pictures, I have added a new section to my website to gather the results of my new experiments.

For more striking examples of street photography, one of the masters of this style is of course Robert Doisneau, whose photographs illustrate more than 50 years of Paris.

The following links are also very interesting:

2 thoughts on “Street photography

  1. I have always enjoyed looking at street photography too, but I am such a weenie about doing it. I’m always afraid that someone will be upset that I have taken a photo of them. What I need is a camera with a REALLY long telephoto lens on it. 😀

    Great pic, BTW … I love it!

  2. 😀 Hahaha! Thanks for your nice comments Orb.
    I have to admit that was one of my great fears too, but I thought I wouldn’t mind myself being taken in picture, as long as the photographer is not too intrusive…
    This particular picture was all the more difficult to take, as I didn’t have a telephoto lens at that time (I had to use a 16-35mm)! Fortunately, the number of pixels allowed to me to crop the original picture 🙂

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