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Charity sent me this photo to talk about. Here’s what she said:
“My question: How can I make this photo more gripping? This is a photo I want viewers to linger over – I want them to stop and think ‘Why has the girl with the phone stopped on this busy street? Why is the girl on the left annoyed? Why is the girl in the mid-ground with the badge on her hat so happy?’. No one I’ve showed my album to has lingered over this photo, only my landscapes seem to catch their attention.”
Charity,
First of all street shooting may seem easy to some, but in my opinion it’s not. I’ve certainly done my share over the years. If you want to experience real life street shooting imagine being chased down the street during the race riots while you were loading your Nikon F motor drive. That was my first opportunity to do some street shooting. That was around 1970 and I was shooting for United Press International. By the way, I was getting paid ten dollars a picture “if they transmit”. What that meant was that they had to like it for me to get paid.
Ok, let’s talk about your photo:
As I always tell my online students with the BPSOP, and the students that take my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, you won’t always be around to explain your thought process to the viewer. It’s going to have to stand on its own and be what I refer to as a “Quick Read”.
In your photo, you may have felt the minimal vibrations given off by the people in the crowd, but the viewer won’t…why?
Our culture (the one currently subsiding in the US), has been bombarded with a lot of dumb reality shows and a whole lot of violence. We’re use to it, and to a lot of the population look forward to more and more and more. We get off to seeing people get angry on the TV. Angry or sick enough to kill a lot of people in just one hour. Actually, if you take away the commercials (which by the way are also getting violent) there’s a lot less than one hour.
So, you ask me how do you get people to “linger longer”? There will have to be a lot more going on in this photo than the subtleties you’re stating. The first thing you’ve said is, “Why has the girl with the phone stopped on a busy street?” The problem with this is that you’ve stopped all the action in your frame so it really doesn’t look like she has stopped. Btw, it looks like she’s blowing a bubble that just popped.
You asked, “why is the girl on the left annoyed?” Truth be told, she doesn’t look annoyed to me. If you want people to come off looking annoyed, then make sure the viewer can see that and not let it be something you think may be happening.
You asked, “Why is the girl in the mid-ground with the badge on her hat look so happy?” She’s sooooo out of focus, and surrounded by lots of other out of focused faces that I would be very surprised if the viewer would pick up on that.
Here’s one of my photos I shot on Mardi Gras day in New Orleans. What feeling do you get when looking at it? Do I need to be with you to explain it?
Here’s what I strongly suggest you do: Study the great street photographers like Bruce Davidson for one, and of course the most famous of them all is Henri Cartier-Bresson. If street photography is a new passion for you, then studying the masters should definitely be required reading.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
