So week 6 was street photography which is a genre of photography I’m not too familiar with.  The idea goes like this.  You go out into the street with your camera and shoot people doing interesting “stuff” hopefully showing real emotions or caught in great compositions without them knowing.  That last bit is the challenge “WITHOUT THEM KNOWING”.  Those of you who know me well know I’m not that inconspicuous.  I kind of stand out – quite a lot.  I’m clumsy, loud and not the kind of guy who can do this without being seen.

But I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a go. So out I went with the camera to see what I could shoot.

So guess how many times I was caught taking a sneaky picture?  That’s right – EVERYTIME.  Apparently having me standing in front of you with a camera in my hand and my tongue sticking out is a bit obvious.

That said I quite enjoyed the process, it can be a little voyeuristic, you sitting on a bench waiting for someone to do something “interesting”. When I got home I also found I had an excessively large number of pictures of young women (they were over 21 – I’m not that bad).  Very few dudes   I also had a lot of shots of people staring directly at me with a “Get Lost Creep” look on their face – but that’s normal.

Some street photographers find a great background with good light, and just sit there waiting for the right subject to come along – I’d suck at this, it’s too much like nature photography for me, sitting by a hole in the ground for hours.  Others stop passers by with “interesting looks or faces” and ask if they can take their portrait.  This I think I could do, once I got over the embarrassment.

Anyway after an afternoon in the mall I got a few pics I liked, and this one was one of my favorites.  It would have been better if she was closer to the guy, but she didn’t want to look at him or acknowledge he was there, and I thought that was funny.