A small guide to Street Photography PT. 16
Keep following my workflow…
Sometimes there are places that deserve special attention. They are those locations that catch your attention, your curiosity and turn out to be fantastic spots to tell stories. When you meet one you realize it almost immediately: it is a particular energy, a place where particularly crowded situations are created, a lively, pulsating, vibrating place.
It can be a street corner, an avenue or just a small part of a street. In Oaxaca I found a place that is the entrance to a bar and usually is one of the first places I photograph when I back in that wonderful city.
The sign written directly on the wall, what the name suggests (Bar, the 3rd world), the saloon-like entrance of the old west: everything contributes to creating a special atmosphere, the ideal if you are looking for something describing the south of Mexico. Deeply Latin America.
In cases like these it can't be a click and go. I stay there. I observe and I photograph several times.
Clearly not all photos are great and only one or two at most will be the keepers. The photos I do are like a studio where I am continuing to photograph but waiting for the good one. By changing position I can evaluate the differential potential of the place.
Working a scene is something many of us as street photographers do. And it can lead you to good results.
While I working I think the ideal would be to have more human subjects there. I need to wait. Patience is what the place is asking me.
What I wanted is happening, even if the composition doesn't drive me crazy in this case. I have to wait a little longer. The photo will come. Being persistent also means this in photography.
OK, here we go. Maybe we are in the right way. I just need to change a little my position and photographing again.
Yeah! That is. This is the keeper of the series. It is interesting for several reasons. First of all is not a photo composed according to academy, just like I love photography. I like the subject coming out of the frame on the left. It contributes to an idea of the imponderable that a frame in the street is. And on the right the mother talking to the children with that hand as if to hide the baby's face.
But the gem on the photo is given by the boy who is perfectly embedded in the peeling part of the wall, in order to make it more evident. In my opinion this is a photo that works.
After this shot I thought to have the image I was waiting for. To work the scene is a great tool for a street photographer.
And this is the lesson for you in this new chapter of my small street photography guide.
