Category Archives: Street Photography

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The Task Of Seeing With A Camera

May 10, 2013 streetshooter 3 Comments

……….I know, I know…I musta been crazy. It’s just a hard habit to break. I went downtown this morning , yeah…yeah…Market Street. I wanted to work the iPhone and learn how it sees and teach it how I sees. Let’s put things in perspective. We all love our cameras…yup, even Wouter and Jorge. Chances are if your anything like I think you are…you use the phone more then the cameras.

So I looked at the phone on the desk……iPhoney said to me….you ain’t got the gutz to go without a camera. It was right on the money. I grabbed the X20 and a small lens brush and that’s that. Walker’s hanging around my neck on the Luigi Braided Strap. He likes the Brown Braided better then the Black standard.

Iphoney is in the back pocket of my jeans, I have a battery recharger for the phone and that’s all.

X20

The X20 is an amazing camera and we get along fine. It has a sense of humor but it’s not a trickster. It has never let me down and I’ll probably never fall out of love with it……at least not yet.

The phone has a nice presence when working. I carry it in my hand and I started doing a few things to throw the attention away from it’s lens. I only raise the phone when getting ready for a photo. I do this slowly because I do it slowly. Then, I press the release and wait until it’s time. When I raise the camera, I sometimes scratch my arm and then the subject does not see the picture being made. I’m still experimenting but I learned something today.

I have a new camera to work with. I feel guilty in a way because I took the X20 also and I never cheat on a camera or anyone. I’m a monogamous shooter. I should have just taken the phone and I will once my extra batteries arrive.

I look at my photos and it’s hard to tell which is from what camera. The task of seeing with a camera is now underway but the results are very exciting and promising.

iPhone 4

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading my thoughts.

shooter out………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

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Olivier Told Me I Was A 63 Year Old Hipster.

May 9, 2013 streetshooter 1 Comment

I do not can know if I should be happy or well…that’s an ugly thought. See, Olivier is much younger than me and he has these ideas that well, maybe at times they could be called exciting.

So I’m off to the VA Hospital again because my Electrolytes are as high as Duane flying in his aeroplane. Now here’s the thing. I always carry a camera. Olivier said I carry a camera all the time and don’t use it. Never I said. If I carry, I use.

The guys a bad influence. He suggested that I use my iPhone 4 and not carry any other camera. I mean to tell ya….this is much easier said then done. I left the house and just carried the phone. It felt natural cause I have my phone with me all the time.

I kept reaching in my pocket for my camera but alas….empty. So I committed to getting this going.

It took about 1/2 hour to get the camera to be non-intruding. It’s almost a true Point n’ Shoot. I use the widest lens FOV and the release technique for capture. The phone has great DOF so I pre-focus about 5′ in front of me….then I press the shutter release but I don let go until I frame and the moment is right. The ya just release and the camera does it’s thing.

All in all, it’s not a bad way to work. I managed to get very close to people but those shots Olivier is using for an article.

Once the camera stuff is out of the way, it’s time to go to Lightroom. That was cool as I’m already designing Presets for Mobile cameras.

Do I think that my iPhone will take the place of my cameras? No. Just like I choose what camera to take on a shoot, I now just increased my choices by 1.

There’s a lot of photos out there and even inside and such. We should stay open minded as to what camera is best to use for any given session. One thing doesn’t work for me. A lot of times I carry my camera and make photos using one hand. The other hand has my phone in it and I pretend I’m talking to someone. It’s a very good way to disguise what your doing.

I promised Olivier that I’d make an honest effort to use the iPhone as a camera. At first I was reluctant but I’ve come to see the light, once again.

It’s not a hard thing to pursue. After all, a camera by any other name is still a camera. Which brings me to an important point.

What Name does this camera get.

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The Fuji X20 as a Street Camera…..Part 2

May 6, 2013 streetshooter 2 Comments

I ain’t no fanboy, can’t be ’cause I don’t know what it is. Just cause I was a Hippie in the 60’s, don’t mean I’m Hip enough now to know about these things.

Let me start by saying what I really hate about the X20 on and off the Streets. It…….hmmmmmmm?

So now that that’s outta the way…here’s some more things I like about this camera. Now bear with me here and keep this between you and me. I don’t want this getting out. It’s got this zoomie lens on it. Shame, shame Shooter….a ZOOMIE?

Now I ain’t one to spread rumors and such but this here shot was at I think 112mm. I know, I know…..a tele shot, in color! Well, this was on the way back from yhe VA…so that’s my story and I’m sticking with it….

The X20 has a wonderful lens and to go with it, extremely fast, accurate Auto Focus…at every focal length. Put that in a small compact camera with great Image Stabilization and you have the making for a wonderful camera. I don’t use the viewfinder but I like it. I didn’t use it above but should have. I forgot about it because the screen is just so good.

On or off the street, this camera is very cool. Look, here’s the thing. I am a shooter. I have been for almost 5 decades. I learned one thing that I never forgot or even got complacent about. The IMAGE!

I love photographs. I love mine, that’s woman’s over there and yours. I don’t need all kinds of things in a camera but I do need a camera to be an active part of my creative process. I need a camera to help me capture the image without intruding on my vision.

There are many cameras that can do the task at hand if….one takes the time to form a collaboration with the camera. I am in the process of adapting the X20 to my process. Unfortunately, this camera can’t ever be a tool to work with. I feel bad about that but I must say that my cameras are not tools, they are my friends and work with me to make the images I get credit for.

Every camera that I thought about being a tool, well…..they were put on eBay.

I normally keep the X20 on 28mm. It just feels natural to me and that in itself is a pleasure. As I stated on my last post, I set the camera to MF and use 4′ as my focus distance at 28mm. I use f/5.6 but am covered from f/4 – f/8.

The Raw files convert to B&W or Color easy. Of course I use my Presets and they are tailored to my vision and my camera’s files.

This is a real serious street camera. It’s very compact, very fast and above all….it reconfigures on the spot.
This shot above…. I was coming out of the Trolley tunnel, the camera was set to AF at f?2 because I was in very low light. As soon as I saw this scene develop, I was able to in a matter of seconds to get the camera set and make this shot. I love the little man on the man’s head…..

I’m weird but have cool cameras……..

Later….don

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The Fuji X20 as a Street Camera…….and More

May 5, 2013 streetshooter 16 Comments

This is not a review, well, not a traditional review. These are my thoughts and findings on the Fuji X20.

With any camera that I use and hopefully end up keeping, I need certain things from it. The most important is…..the non intrusion, don’t bug me when I’m working, I’ll adjust you when I need to thing. Yeah, that’s a big sentence with a whole lot of meaning. The X20 is up to the chore. As my feelings respond to the street, so must my camera adjust to those feelings. I need to be able to change working settings without hassle.

With the camera in Manual Focus, the focus scale is tricky. Do not pay attention to the DOF marks…they are so wrong. The actual focus mark is close. So, I set the focus indicator to 4′. At f/4,… f/5.6,… f/8,… I get around 3′ or less to about infinity in very acceptable focus. Of course this is using 28mm. I may try DOF settings at other focal lengths but not for a spell. If anyone else has tested and has settings….I’d be glad to post them and give you credit.

I would also give you free copies of the free magazine.

The Auto Focus is very fast and accurate. From 28mm to 112mm, the focus is almost instantaneous. The AF Target Box is very easy to change size. This is very important to me as I change it to suite the light and movement.

Just click the control wheel up…then use the jog wheel to adjust size. Can’t get easier or better than this.

The finder works very well and I tested it so that I know what it sees. It’s nice and now that I know how it works, I can forget about it. The screen is where it’s at…for any camera. Here’s a very cool thing. Sometimes I shoot chest shots. The camera is on a neck strap and hanging around my neck against my chest. The sensor turns off the screen and saves power because your shooting without the screen anyway. This is real nice to save power and also if your in a darker area, no light from the screen.

I go from neck strap to wrist strap in a flash. I use the Le Hook and that’s as fast as it gets.

It’s Sunday morning… 0755 and I need more coffee and I have to mow the lawn. I’ll take the X20 with me cause it’s a great macro shooter also…..

to be continued…….

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1st of May Walkabout Philly Photo Shoot Day….

May 1, 2013 streetshooter Leave a comment

…….hold on a minute dude…….. I’ll bring my friends up to par. See, I have a one on one this morning with Randy. Ok….

Randy…..your camera has to be at the ready…… I take Randy’s camera and look at the setup……we are on the magic escalator at the FTC…..the light there waits Click! for no one…..

….Randy ask me how I saw and made that photo in just a second or two. Randy, that’s why we are here together so you can forget everything and start using what you learned.

I have to admit, the X20 was ready because I know where I’m at and what I can find there. He thought that the X20 was really a cool fast camera. It is and so is the GRD4, the Pen3, the 5D11 and the Canon G9. It’s about setup Randy….all the people reading this know that and never have an issue getting that decisive second.

Click!

So Randy has a real nice Nex 6. Nice camera. I tell him to learn to use the screen…..I mean he’s looking at the finder all the time. USE THE SCREEN Randy! See that guy right above these words….yeah, that’s him….I saw at the moment before exposure,a photo. Now I won’t use it for myself but workshop time is here and I will use it for that.

Randy saw the import into Lightroom and the magic of the preset…..one click and that’s what is up above. So I answered all the questions Randy thru at me and I helped with the setup and he is happy. I asked about breakfast and he said it was on him…..

We ate at my unfavorite grease pit and all was fine for a 1st of May Day Walkabout Philly Photo Shoot.

Ya know, sometimes I make regular street photos also….like the guy above…..no…he doesn’t make photos…he makes a photo….See the arm action and the posture…tell tale sign of a photo.

More sane craziness later………

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Rainy Day Bluez…….and the Fuji X20 is My Friend……….

April 29, 2013 streetshooter 3 Comments

No! I’m not starting to do color for myself. I am in the process of making Color Presets that make an image feel the way I want it to make me feel. That’s not an easy task because I’m really not a color shooter.

The content and intent must be supportive to color and visa verse. So I just shoot what I always shoot and let the color pixels fall where they may. I don’t think I’d want to be a generic anything at anytime. So I make things the way I live them.

Take the photo right above…..yeah, that one. See, I was just doing my thing looking for whatever I look for. Then without thinking too much, I raise the camera and breathe and then Click! I was thinking that I liked what was going on. The girl seemed so caught up in her femininity and that of the heads. I didn’t think about color or black & white until I got the images into Light Room.

Then of course I realized that I am in the process of designing color presets. So, heck….let’s try it. By Jove, I think he’s got it!

It should be noted that the camera in my hand was the Fuji X20. At no time did it speak to me or cause any intrusion. I don’t treat my camera as a tool. I treat is as my companion on my photographic journey.

More tomorrow…..Good Nite Wouter…..Good Nite Jorge……….

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………of course the camera has a lot to do with it………

April 27, 2013 streetshooter 2 Comments

Many of my friends are writing on their blogs and in forums etc that it’s the shooter and not the camera. Well, not to be argumentative but I probably am as my wife definitely thinks so….. all the time. See the camera is much more important then most realize.

Barsik (the best muse I ever met)

It’s true that ones vision is the main ingredient in photography that needs the most attention. You can read fancy books, go to school, take workshops, classes whatever you like and it’s mainly about your vision. It should be….until you go to WORK!

Here’s what I teach. There is a process to anything, even drinking a beer. One should be totally into the here and now during the process in order to get the most out of it.

So lets move along and go to work. We will analyize the process of making photos. Now please don’t think there is only one way or even my way. My way works for me and I really don’t want you to do it that way….I’d rather you find your own method of working.

(the camera Don, get to the camera part…..) allright, allright.

Your on the street. Your eyes are like that of a hawk. Your walking and your in step with the life that surrounds you. You can smell the perfume from that young lady……over there,…to the right….you smell the exhaust fumes from the buses and the cars etc.

Your camera (I hope you named your camera by now)… is in your hand just waiting to respond to your every whim. Sorry, the guy over there has his camera on a neck strap….that’s fine…… ok….

You can feel something on the horizon but it’s not yet….just a little bit further down the street….

Then, out of nowhere this lady walks out towards you and the light behind her is perfect…click!

You didn’t get that, geeze, why are you fiddling with the controls to set exposure? You, over there…see…you raised the camera to your eye and she saw you and well….. there’s a million things to come between you and your photos. The one thing that can’t be tolerated is your camera. So if the camera is just a tool, then go hammer a nail with it.

Smack

Your camera must be an extension of your process. You must have a friend that your working with and not an intruder that just causes lost images. You should be able to make an adjustment in just a few seconds. If the camera is not an important part of your work, then your probably just looking for a scapegoat for you shooting failures. Yeah, this is heavy do do. It’s easy to say, my camera is a pain to work with.

The point is, you have to take responsibility for your choices in camera acquiring procedures. I have a Pen3 with the 25 lux and the 14 2.5. The Pen3 is a very good camera to work with….for me…. I can go back to around 1967 and I didn’t like SLR’s. I just didn’t like the form. I still don’t. I loved Leica M’s because they worked so well.

Flash to 2013 and I still feel the same way…almost. I had the Fuji X10 and really loved the camera. It reconfigured in a flash. Well, I never got a single RAW file to be processed the right way. I have all the goos processors..I make presets, right. I make photos right!

Now the Fuji X20 is at home and it does RAW like I love clams. The point is that this these cameras are mine and I use them. The offer no intrusion to my process, especially on the street.

I beg to differ with my friends. I state here and now that the camera may be a tool to them but to me and my readers….bunk. It’s an extension to our vision because we chose the right one……

No go and sit with you cameras and come up with names….cameras like names…..well…I do take meds for this sort of thing but my wife states that they ain’t working……

I saw this dude on my ride home. Dude didn’t see me on the ride home.

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More Preset Madness

April 25, 2013 streetshooter

Yeah…yeah! I’m stuck on the computer doing presets. Well, I’m really stuck on 2 computers that refuse to co-operate with me or each other. Me poor brain is starting to think in terms of color. My brain, not my mind. But I must admit that working in color is teaching me lot’s of things.

Oh yeah…. I’m learning what I already know. I don’t like color but I do like making the presets.

So because I don’t really care for color, I have to find a way to trick the ole’ brain into thinking it likes it. I have sent some of these presets out to shooters and have all good responses from them. I guess that means I might have my brain fooled.

What I am doing is this. When I work, streets usually, I see the world in color. It’s not my idea but they put color in everything. So, in my brain, I reprocess the image in front of me to be in shades of grey. This of course is happening in the mind….now enter my cameras. I have them all to have a B&W screen. If they can’t do that….they belong elsewhere.

So, if I take the color out of the scene and then make a B&W photo the way I want, then add color to it with a palate I can live with….I get what I have up top there….. see those up there……

I do this for those that like the color presets….for the rest of us……. up there is where it’s at….

don

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Tis a Color world we Make our Black and Whites from

April 23, 2013 streetshooter

I’m a wee bit out of place here so bear with me. I’m very aware of the difference of working in color vrs b&w. I’m not teaching a course here, just merely explaining how I work within each method. Your findings may be different but this is how I see it.

I’ve been doing b&w street for almost half a century. During this time I have only on rare occasions used or even seen color. Part of this is that I really don’t think in color. Of course I see it but I discount it’s intensity and meaning when I’m shooting. I remember more then a few decades ago, my friend Paul McGuirk (actually my brother for all intents and purposes) started shooting color slides and then color negs. I felt betrayed by his images. I felt that I would not let this color disease enter my world. Then one weekend in Washington DC, he showed me his photos. We did this often, share thoughts and discuss our work together.

Things changed for me as far as vision goes. We were looking at some photos and one just sang out to me….”I’m a color shot, don’t you see that”? Well, it’s a photo of the Lincoln Memorial. That photo in itself changes the way I thought. It didn’t change the way I worked but it had a very profound effect on me. Issue two of The Inspired Eye will have an interview and photos by Paul in it. The vision changing thought provoking photo is in the issue.

Move ahead many years and here I am. A great thing for me is to have my screen on the camera see in b&w. Then when I go to LR, I see a color raw file. At this point a decision can be made as to the life of the photo. I still don’t see color out there but when I re-photograph in LR, that’s where color has a chance. I started making presets in color because if I am going to work that way, I want it to be my way.

I think these 2 images express how I relate to color. You may or may not agree but it’s how I respond to it. Long gone are the days of having to make a decision before exposure with films……

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Walker Evans In The Garden

April 21, 2013 streetshooter

If you know me at all, you know that I name my cameras. My White GRD4 is named Walker. It doesn’t matter if you know who Walker is, but nice if ya do.

Tanya, my wife..not a camera and I work hard in the garden. We plant bulbs and watch as the squirrels dig them up and eat them. We plant grass seed so that we get a nice thick furry covering of Kentucky Blue Grass just so I can hack it down with the mower and weed whacker. This also feed the birds.

I always make a rock garden so that I can pick up a rock and find a squiggly worm to hold in my hand and watch Tanya freak out. I get to order pizza for a few days after that episode. Tanya calls lettuce salad. I think the rabbits agree with her….I don’t really know because after 7 years, I’ve yet to taste the lettuce from the garden. The rabbits always smile at me whenever I walk by them.

There’s something about Russian Woman and Cucumbers. When I talk to Tanya’s sisters or mother, they always ask about cucumbers. Money in the bank means nothing if you don’t have cucumbers. That’s a good thing that we get lots and lots of cucumbers.

We adopted a cat so that the squirrels would be afraid to come to the yard. I look at Barsik as the Killer Cat that hates anything moving. The squirrels see Barsik as a friend and a guard for them as they eat the garden. I think the squirrels see the garden as a grocery store. It must be a co-op because they don’t pay or work for anything. Tanya said we are the welfare dept for the local animals.

I like the garden because I get to nurture the flowers with ever so gentle a hand. I water and put miracle grow so that the flowers grow tall with wonderful colors.

I do this so that I can cut them down, put them in a vase, bring them to the dining room table and as I watch them die, I get to use Walker to make photos of them.

Street Photography Chronicles by Don Springer