365: 5 lessons from the first 50 photos

My immersion into photography is a relatively new phenomenon. It began in early February of this year (2013) when I borrowed my housemate’s Cannon EOS 500D to photograph my Grandmother’s headstone. I was set to visit her empty house and the crowded cemetery on the Saturday, and during the preceding week I began taking practice shots of my housemates, empty streets, and the miscellany of crap that littered my room.

Something happened. I started to get attached to these over processed, badly composed and generally focus-void images. I would take a photo of the view from my window, edit it beyond recognition on iPhoto (with that truly horrible iPhoto vignette), upload it onto Flickr and subsequently check it every half hour to see if I could breach that ten view landmark. No matter how often I refreshed my inbox, that email from Magnum never materialised.

Keen to move from ‘strength’ to ‘strength’ I followed my housemate’s advice and began a project 50 (50 photos: 50 days: 50mm lens) which I entitled ‘Opening my eyes’. The main function of this project was to learn how to work a camera, what the various apertures did, shutter speeds and so on, basic stuff. At the beginning I was adamant that all my settings should be manipulated to allow me a constant aperture of f8, and by the end I was day dreaming of that sweet depth of field at f1.4. This set of 50 photos is more a visual representation of my control over the physical camera function than any artistic talent, and that is precisely why I enjoy looking back at it.

If the project 50 can be understood as how I learnt to use a camera, my goal for the 365 is to learn how to take photographs.

I recently reached the first 50 photos mark, it passed a lot faster this time, and so I decided to make this post including 5 photos from this period, and detailing 5 lessons that I have learnt.

Lesson 1:

 – You can put your camera in a strangers face and…wait..they won’t punch you?!

Even though I had read countless blogs, seen photos, and watched youtube videos on street photography, a part of me was still scared of physical confrontation arising from shooting street. I had even taken quite a few candid shots of strangers a few months prior (although I had drifted from this during my furlough with film photography) and received no violent reactions of any kind. Despite all of this I left my flat feeling enthusiastic and inspired, I had the settings on my camera ready, I had done some research and I was feeling good about the whole street venture and yet I found myself fumbling with my camera, trying too hard to appear to be shooting architecture and just generally opting out of taking the photographs that I could visualize all around me. On one occasion I attempted to be sneaky and pretended to take a shot of Salford Law Courts while scoping out an interesting character only to find them move out of the way and gesture for me to get a better shot of the building!

Then, during a particularly monotonous friday lunchtime, something happened. I relaxed. I calmly approached people, took their photos without attempting to hide what I was doing, smiled and said thank you. My subjects smiled, and mumbled ‘your welcome’ or ‘okay’, and we both carried on our separate ways. Just like I had read we would.

Ultimately, I learned that to take the photos that I want to take I need not be sneaky, but instead walk the line between being friendly and, well, ‘ballsy’. I have included some helpful links and videos at the bottom of the page which I found really helped me with my confidence.

Lesson 2:

• Go Primetime

Another thing I learnt during this period is that for me, prime lenses are the way forward. My X-E1 came with an 18-55mm which I found to be heavy, obtrusive and not well suited to my style of working. This lens was usually kept at 18mm anyway (which on the X-E1 equates to approx. 27mm) which made the zoom function largely redundant. When I began taking photos my housemate explained to me that zoom lenses encouraged laziness and these words have resonated with me since.

I bought the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 and later traded my zoom lens for the 18mm f2 (second hand but in great condition). This decision may not make sense to everybody, it may seem financially foolish, wasteful or even limiting, but for me I am certain that it was the right move. I guess that is the real lesson here; there are no real rules when it comes to gear, what is right for you is what matters – if you can make an adapter to get that L glass onto your iPhone then why not! I am sure that the daily photos of your breakfast, lunch and dinner will look super sharp!

Lesson 3:

• It takes more than practice to make perfect

I used to turn to flickr for my photography learning and inspiration, I would trawl through street photography groups without prejudice and see what other flickr users were doing differently and better. Since I began this 365 I have spent considerably more time looking at the work of iconic photographers, looking at the elements of composition and content in attempt to try understand what makes these photos so impressive, and how I can look to approach my own work in this way. I do still  browse groups on flickr, but I pay more attention to the photos of my contacts, and specifically to a handful of contacts whose work I particularly admire. I find that spending more time looking at, and analysing fewer photos gives me a better insight than just clicking past 100 shots in ten minutes.

Personally I feel that my own work has benefited more from this approach. By submitting photos to genre-specific critique groups, reading photography blogs, and studying high quality work, I have gained new insights into the fundamental elements of photography that I would have never stumbled across in 50 days wandering the streets of Manchester taking constant snapshots. I have learnt that while practice is very important in photography, there are valuable lessons to be learnt elsewhere.

This was reaffirmed to me yesterday by a much respected friend through Flickr whose work I admire, who advised me to ‘look at a lot of the photographs of respected masters, study those photos, and your work will constantly get better and better.’

Lesson 4:

 – The value of presets

This project requires me to take a lot of photos, which means a whole bunch of post-processing. Traditionally I would edit each photo, adding and adjusting the various sliders on Aperture at whim, until I was happy with the result. A minutes browse of my photostream will attest my sporadic and inconsistent post-processing ventures. Needless to say, it has never been my greatest skill. As you can imagine, this was a very time consuming process, and this is why I began making use of presets. I found a very good youtube video by Thomas Leuthard giving the exact adjustments that he uses for his B&W street work and emphasising the virtues of spending as little time possible post-processing. The video can be found below.

I now have two standard presets; one colour, one B&W. I do make adjustments depending on the photo, but presets give me an initial impression of the final product and save me a lot of time. I hope to develop my own presents in time, which I will share, but in the before then if anyone has any of their own then I would be keen to check these out (as mentioned above I edit on Aperture).

Lesson 5:

• Some days you are not going to want to, or will be simply unable to take any interesting or inspiring photographs

Obviously with this project there are going to be days when I do not want to leave the house. I live in Manchester and it rains a hell-ova-lot; sometimes I look out the window, see the grey abyss and think to myself you know what? There must be some interesting nick-nacs around the flat that I can take a quick photo of.. Over the course of this year I will end up taking some pretty non-shots, some last minute cop outs and countless boring pictures of pedestrians. I guess this is just the nature of a 365 project.

Photography is still new to me and everyday is a learning process, but writing this does make me feel like I am, very slowly, making progress.

Useful Links:

Presets (Thomas Leuthard) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEcr29SSQU

Street Photography Tips (Digital Rev) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In5sR-tUhCM

Eric Kim on why you shouldn’t be ‘sneaky’ in street photography – http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/04/27/5-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-be-sneaky-when-shooting-street-photography/

“There are no ethics in street photography.” – Thomas Leuthard

Saturday was a good day. I had spent much of my free time during the previous evenings reading various Street Photography blogs, articles on composition, and watching videos on a photographers rights to take photos in public places. As I made my way about Manchester Saturday morning, I took a mix of both candid and permitted street shots, the later predominantly for the purpose of practice and to build up my confidence shooting strangers in the streets. All the while I was looking for ‘that shot’; the photograph that I would use for that day in my project 365.

I saw a young boy climbing on a sculpture (large letters spelling ‘Avenue’) in one of the more affluent parts of town. I knew this would make a great photo and wary of looking sinister, in light of recent scandals within the UK media and heightened sensitivity regarding children in the wake of Operation Yewtree, I identified the child’s father and asked for permission to photograph his son. The father smiled and gave me the go ahead. I took three shots; two of his son staring mesmerised into the camera with his younger brother peeking curiously around from behind, and one of the younger son walking past the large ‘avenue’ letters. I immediately knew that the first two photos were ‘keepers’; there was a beautiful innocence in these shots, the composition was spot on and the protective relationship between the brothers made for a really interesting picture.

I showed the photos to the father, who seemed impressed, and we chatted for a moment about my amateur photography, specifically my project 365. The whole mood during this exchange was very positive, he seemed genuinely impressed and enthusiastic about the photos and I took note of his email address, promising to send them to him later on that day.

Approximately one hundred mediocre snapshots and a five hours later I had the photos on my computer, processed (in B&W – predictably) and was feeling very pleased with the result. Not only was I looking forward to sharing these with the great people of flickr, but I was looking forward to sending this to Daniel (not his real name) because I had come away from our exchange feeling really positive and I knew he would reply to my email singing my praises and thanking me for this great photo of his children.

I send the photos, along with a brief paragraph to explain how pleased I was with the result and how I would be honored to include one in my project 365. All in all, it was a friendly and enthusiastic email. The next morning I had received the following reply:

 “Thank you for the pictures. If you don’t mind I would prefer they were not on Flickr.”

Now, there is ultimately nothing wrong with this; as a parent Daniel has cause for being concerned about protecting his children, what I found so frustrating and demoralizing was this apparent U-turn in his attitude. Before I go any further I should say that I replied to Daniel, expressing a mild disappointment, further emphasising how pleased I was with the photos, but stating that I would respect his preferences.

The absence of any comment on the photographs gives me the impression that he simply viewed the attachments for a second before disregarding them. Further, the exchange left me feeling as if I had caused him some injury or offense, leaving a sense of guilt that perhaps (despite his prior approval) I had acted inappropriately. Parents love to have photos of their children, and these photos were perfectly innocent – the kind that a parent would take of their own child, albeit nicely edited, composed and on a higher quality camera. As people often pay for professional photos (I am not saying that I am in any way professional, just more adept than Joe Bloggs and his smart phone), I felt that by giving him these photos, he benefited by getting free, quality photographs of his family and I in turn benefited by having these images for my portfolio.

Once this confusion had passed I ended up getting pretty frustrated about the whole situation, which has really put a downer on my whole attitude to my photography at the moment. As selfish as it may sound, I began to view the whole situation as an injustice done to me by this man. He was free to print these photographs, put them on his Facebook, or simply disregard and forget about them (most likely), and I was stuck with them on my computer, unable to share them with anybody.

I spoke to a few friends and family about this ‘dilemma’. My stepmother’s advice being that before I took a photograph of anyone I had to ‘ask permission to take their photo and put it on the internet’. She didn’t seem to appreciate my retaliation echoing Thomas Leuthard’s sentiment that “You either go candid and forget the law or you follow the law and lose the spirit of street photography.” (www.thomasleuthard.com/Books/GoingCandid.pdf).

Ultimately I stopped feeling sorry for myself, and chose another picture for my 365 (above), but the whole episode has left me feeling pretty empty about my photography and made me question the ethics of Street Photography and the sharing of other people’s personal images online. In this instance I am content to respect Daniels preferences for the time being. I decided to begin this blog with this article predominantly to get the whole issue of my chest, I also wondered if any one else had any thoughts on the ethics of Street Photography, or any similar episodes to share.

Anyway, thank you for reading. More to come soon I hope! 🙂

Diarmuid

Further reading / viewing:

http://www.thomasleuthard.com/Books/GoingCandid.pdf

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2012/06/20/free-ebook-31-days-to-overcome-your-fear-of-shooting-street-photography/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJH9F7Hcluo