Expanded fatalism of a street photographer
In the course of my experience I have tried all the ways to photograph: totally MANUALand totally AUTO. i worked in PROGRAM, SHUTTER SPEED and APERTURE priority…I photographed with flash and natural light. Depending on the camera I worked with I tried the best way that could work on the street.
And I discovered the truth: there is not the best way.
I don’t know what comfort zone is. I just know you have to go along with the light and what happens in front of your eyes.
Despite all the precautions I can take, I mess up most of my street shots: out of focus, no good background cluttered, overlapping subjects and shit like that. Street Photography is a constant flirting with failure. This is why I learn a lot from street photography. It keeps me grounded.
After all these years I haven't been able to find a unique way of working. Also because by changing camera you can't think of a universal way to work but rather you have to be smart and understand how to work well with what you have. And even so the road changes everything for you again. So next time I go to priority of times because maybe it works better and that shot I wouldn't have made a mistake doing so ... and ... the important thing is to know what to do in every moment. Even so, failure is just a click away. Or a blink of an eye.
Sometimes it's wrong because I rely too much on the camera. Other times you are wrong just because I enter too much competition with the camera and maybe it would help me understand. Sometimes I find myself reading the exif data to figure out where I went wrong.
Maybe without all the fatalism and the proximity to failure I wouldn't even like to do street photography. Sometimes I get overly enthusiastic about a way of working and adopt it, but then I have to change. I have to change because I still have a lot to learn and guys, you learn from experimentation more than from all manuals and schools. I teach photography but not in the way some scholars do. Mine is a language that is always open. there is no academy but rather life. And this awareness that there are no p and there can be no fixed rules. Photography is not an exact science. And to tell the truth, no science is. Something always comes to destroy certainties.
On the street I am attracted by these green bags:
I don't know exactly what this shooting will bring me compared to that element that caught my attention. I don't observe everything and rather let myself be guided by the object of my attention. A way that places confidence in what I will collect next. Or maybe I won't collect anything. This is photographic fatalism, guys.
Whenever I observe something that might be interesting I start shooting. If the scene continues to be interesting I will keep to shoot, shoot and…shoot.
Often those who claim to take pictures on the street start from the wrong approach. They think to approach photography in the same way they would do landscape or portrait. And this creates problems. The public space is a rapid flow of situations and events. And it is more important to immerse yourself in its rhythm, to be part of the metropolis, welcome the dance that is presented around you and welcome it inside you to move at that rhythm. There is no time to overweight in camera settings. Accept it. Street photography is completely different from any other genre. And if you don't, if you don't accept this reality you can also do street photography but excessively precise and devoid of energy.
When I get home and see the photos taken, I smile to find the funky that was in my head while I was shooting.
I prefer the photos taken on the fly than the ones that are widely thought about because they respond to an urgency of the street that evokes all its energy. This I have learned to do and this is what I teach.
