Walked in to town and back today, taking portraits of strangers...

Below is one of the hairdressers I mentioned earlier.
She's looking at one of the hecklers who is accusing me (from across the street) of trying to pick her up...

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Just in case anyone want's to see how light I travel while doing this.
I take just a camera + lens + pouch to hold business cards + pen...

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Really great work. Is this inspired by the 100 strangers project on Flickr? I have started one of those but have let it slip at the minute!

Great photos.
 
tinite said:
Great shots - out of interest, what do you say to them when you're getting them to pose? How do you tell them what you want? Do you just let them do their thing, or tell them exactly what you want?
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It depends on who the subject is, with the girl in the blue dress, I got her to do a star jump, and then a catwalk down the middle of the highstreet, however there was a stupid heckler (that wasn't one of her friends) stood at the side putting her off.

I started out approaching the group of people she was with, I said "I'm doing a project etc. etc. can I get a portrait of you folks" she said "yes" then all the friends said "no", then once her friends said no she said "no".

So I continued the conversation a little, asked if anyone in the group were seeing each other etc. there was one couple but they were very shy, and I wasn't really interested in photographing them anyway.

So I asked my chosen subject (the girl who said yes initially) what her name was, "Annie was the reply", I then asked her to stand in the middle of the street, and she did, then I said do a big star jump, and she did, then I got her to do a modelling pose and she did (I missed this unfortunately as I was too close with my 50mm), so I backed off down the street, and asked her to do a catwalk towards me, as she was I would call out thing like "more attitude".

She was game for pretty much anything, and it was a shame that as all this was going on the heckler kept putting her off.
 
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some real corking shots here man! Keep them coming. I absolutely love the way you process your colour shots. Are you shooting raw and tweaking in lightroom? Care to share you secrets? ;)
 
Excellent mate, didn't see this thread originally but if you excuse the pun, right up my street...on street portraits and people.
 
These photos are great, as I've already said, but just looking back through them. One thing I would have done, is got the man to remove the Republic strap/lanyard thing from around his neck. For me it's just a little distracting. (Just trying to provide constructive criticism for such a strong set!)
 
^^^
Thanks for the critique and yes I agree, it is a distraction, but imo if I would have asked him to do that I wouldn't have got the shot, firstly because he was at work in the shop with a potential customer to his left, so if I got him to remove his company issue neck strap, you can bet his expression wouldn't be pleasant, and as a general rule I always compromise technical perfection in favour of expression.
 
these are exactly why I love photography, an inspiration for me to get off my fat bum and do what I love...:ty:
 
I just don't get it, sorry.
Techinal aspects, fantastic. You are a great photographer. Your shots are ace.
But I cannot figure out why would you want tons of pics of random people?
I love landscape photography, and you would be well within your rights to ask me why I would want tons of pics of random landscapes :D
(And I hope you don't, because I wouldn't be able to answer!!)
So the above in mind, perhaps I've answered my own post?

I kind of understand the candid side of street photography, but even that bothers me a little.
 
^^^
This probably isn't the thread for you tbh Andy.
I'm glad you kind of liked my pictures, and although you did answer your own question, I'll elaborate a little more as there are other factors involved compared to having fun taking lot's of pictures of landscapes.

As for the people who have the will power and courage to spend a day doing this, they will have ALLOT of fun (although probably not at first), and meet ALLOT of people.

Getting people to open up is an art form, it's not always easy for most people, especially as different subjects respond differently in front of a camera , and this doesn't just relate to strangers, but many other genres involving people, so what I learn photographing strangers, can easily be applied to other areas of photography involving people, and once you get good at this you can say to goodbye to awkward photo shoots.
Also note that these can be very important life skills to learn, and can benefit all areas of your life, for example, like me there is probably allot of men (men in particular suffer approach anxiety) on this forum that for a period of their life never had the courage to approach a girl they liked, well photographing strangers is very similar to that anxiety, but that anxiety disappears for the rest of the day only to return the next day.
However even though the anxiety returns the next day (it's hardwired in our heads and we can't do anything about it), it's much easier to get passed it once you are confident in your abilities, and when you are at this stage, you can have allot of fun pushing the envelope on what are essentially social interactions.

Now apart from the 'fun' side of this, there is a commercial side that's probably more important in terms of getting my photography business off the ground.
Let's say I go out a modest 3 times a week to different towns and cities in my area, and photograph 50 people each time, in the space of a year I will have photographed more than 7000 people, and handed them my business card so they can go to my website to retrieve a free watermarked copy for their facebook (with the option to buy a higher res version without a watermark).
So let's assume most of the 7000 are happy with what they receive, and to their surprise actually enjoyed the experience. When these people actually 'need' a photographer in the future, who do you think they are likely to go to first?
 
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You're right, this really isn't a thread for me!

Good job of explaining though!
And from a commercial point of view :clap:
 
Just in case anyone wants to know what it looks like when you're not doing it right and you're out of your depth...

This kind of street'ish photography, can have a weird effect on you and can cloud your perception, because as the day went on my confidence grew and grew, it became almost like a new reality where the usual rules of social boundaries no longer existed.

Walking through a park, I noticed a gang of about 10 youths, so I walked across the grass field and introduced myself, addressing the guy's first as a sign of respect in order to avoid any hostility from the alpha male of the group.

I then explained the whole project thing, and picked a couple of subjects who happened to be giving me fairly good eye contact, I did this by asking what their name was.
So then I pointed to somewhere I thought the light was fairly good, and asked them to go and stand there.

Below is the expression I got from the girl and she was clearly uncomfortable, and no doubt embarrassed in front of all her friends, but worse, this uncomfortable emotion was spreading among the on looking group, flash backs of act's crashing and burning in the 'show me the funny' filled my head.

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At this moment it was like starring into what seemed like a photographic abyss and suddenly fear and panic quickly began to set in, and for a moment I thought I was going to fall flat on my face in front of everyone there.

I knew I needed to breakup up her expression but I also knew "look at the camera...smile" wasn't going to work as it would look completely fake and would likely add to the discomfort felt by everyone there.

So I decided I needed to get her animated, I asked her as confidently as I could to jump as high as she could in the air, she then began to laugh like below.

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Her friend then began to mess around and do pretend model poses like below.
The rest of the group began to relax and enjoy themselves.

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I then walked over to the group and showed them a shot I liked, like below.

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They then began to shower both me and the guy with praise and make comments about how good my 'camera' was, and also began to open up themselves.
At this point I was just glad that I could walk away with my head held high, instead of in shame, so I decided to take my chips off the table while I was ahead, and gave them my business card so they could go to my website for a free web sized copy.

I then got a couple of emails from the group later that night.

So the lesson I learnt was, that when things are not working, it's important to at least give the impression your still confident about what your doing, and then get your subjects expression animated as soon as possible if it doesn't happen on it's own accord.
 
Great images and great explanations. Thanks for taking the time to comment so in depth about it. i would love to be able to do what your doing here. Never gonna happen though.
 
Have you shot any strangers with the 24/2.8 lens? I know longer lenses are traditionally used for portrait, but I think wides can often give a good effect too for people shooting.
 
boliston said:
Have you shot any strangers with the 24/2.8 lens? I know longer lenses are traditionally used for portrait, but I think wides can often give a good effect too for people shooting.
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No I haven't, as I like to have separation from the background with bokeh, however there was a few shot's today that would have benefited from the 24mm, oh well hopefully I'll be able to go FF one day.
 
Brilliant idea and brilliant photo's!!

Genuinely put a smile on my face looking through this thread! (y)
 
Rhys,

I like your photo's, I like the actual idea of a 100 strangers project more though. I've seen some good versions of these, most notably this one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidkillock/sets/72157625653602495/with/5344602702/

http://www.wix.com/dkillock/100strangers

http://www.100Strangers.com/

David Kilock did a superb job with his set (although he's far from finished!) if you need any inspiration. I really like that with each picture he writes a little about them, it makes it more interesting than just a random shot of a random.

this thread and your descriptions seem to be less about photography and more about you going and talking to random people. It's like you are using the camera and the idea of photography to talk to randoms. Most of what you write is all about the approaching strangers technique and hardly anything about the technicalities of the photographs.
 
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joescrivens said:
Rhys,

I like your photo's, I like the actual idea of a 100 strangers project more though. I've seen some good versions of these, most notably this one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidkillock/sets/72157625653602495/with/5344602702/

http://www.wix.com/dkillock/100strangers

http://www.100Strangers.com/

David Kilock did a superb job with his set (although he's far from finished!) if you need any inspiration. I really like that with each picture he writes a little about them, it makes it more interesting than just a random shot of a random.

this thread and your descriptions seem to be less about photography and more about you going and talking to random people. It's like you are using the camera and the idea of photography to talk to randoms. Most of what you write is all about the approaching strangers technique and hardly anything about the technicalities of the photographs.
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Thanks Joe, and David Killock work looks awesome, but this isn't really a typical 100 stranger project, in fact 100 does't have anything to do with it, it just happens to be part of my opener.

I have one goal, to create local awareness and build a client base as large as possible in as short time as possible, and have fun while doing it.

Also, this thread is hardly the place to talk about technical stuff, that kind of info can be found anywhere.

As I said, I'm primarily doing this to spread awareness and get work, and I'm simply posting my work here for anyone who's interested and who may find this stuff helpful, and for the people who arn't or don't, that doesn't matter to me as I'm not specifically trying to cater to the will/interests of others in this forum, either they find it useful or they don't.
 
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