Flash, ICM, night and Mexico City downtown life
Coming back to use flash on the street.
ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) and the flash on the street were the basis of the recipe used for my Reality Remade project way back in 2011. I shared some thoughts on instagram:
Flash photography isn't part of my usual activity, especially on the street, but it's still a technique I don't deny myself using when I feel like it. However, what I want to avoid is the situation "scared of the flash" which seems to me a cliché which is not even interesting. I don't care if Bruce Gilden has entrusted a part of his career that allowed him to become famous to this approach: the idea of scaring people with flash seems like dicks to me. And I've always avoided it. But the street flash photo certainly has a fascinating aesthetic nature, which in combination with a portraitist approach allows to isolate certain scenes and make them unusually beautiful and surreal.
I have always tried to contextualize the use of flash and it is never a random choice:
In Reality Remade I created ghosts to make a project talking about life's fleetingness
In Oaxaca during the Day of the Dead celebrations to highlight the catrinas and calaveres that I saw
And so on Sunday, at night, in downtown I would to make visible the sense of mistery. The flash allowed me to accentuate this sensation, isolating the subjects, creating effects thanks to the movement of the camera that made the scenes deliberately constructed, but always maintaining a respectful approach to the subjects. A video has been already released on THE STREET PHOTOGRAPHY CHANNEL:
Clearly to get a consistent job, half an hour of work is little. But despite this I take home a keeper. My goal was especially to show that we can do it also with a small camera and its built-in flash. The photos:
OK, guys, I hope you enjoyed this small trip on the flash street photography. And that it can be inspiring not so much to use flash but rather to always be creative and ready to experiment with new techniques.
