Street Focus 08: Q&A and Street Challenge

Episode 8: Q&A, Street Challenge and Pick of the Week

And The Winner of the MOTION challenge is….

There are two winners this week. Congratulations to Don Conrard and Paul Griffith!

Don kindly provided some details about how he shot this image:

©Don Conrad
©Don Conrard

“The photo was taken in Post Alley, which runs under the Pike Place Market in Seattle. It was not a grab shot. I composed the photo and waited for people to come by and start climbing the stairs. The picture was shot with a Leica M6 and 35mm f2 Summicron lens on Tri-X film. If memory serves, I set the shutter speed for 125th of a second in order to get some slight blur in the man's leg to illustrate motion. Using a Lecia, which shows a larger field of view than the actual image area, gave me a brief instant to see the subject coming into the frame before I pushed the shutter. The camera also has almost no shutter lag. Still, I sat there and shot two rolls of film of people starting to climb the stairs before getting the shot I wanted. Most people thought I was taking a picture of the poster on the left.”

See more of Don's work on his website.

Paul also shared a few words about his very surreal motion shot:

©Paul Griffith
©Paul Griffith

“Walking through the streets / lanes of Venice this year I set my Fuji X-E1 to 1/30th sec at f6.4 using my 18-55mm Fujinon lens set to 18mm focal length.
With the flash set to slow and walking at a steady pace, as people passed me. I held the camera above my head and angle down slightly. This young lady was walking passed me and I fired the flash off.”

 

See more of Paul Griffith's work on his blog and on G+.

I'm happy to send Paul and Don each a photography book , compliments of our friends at Rocky Nook Publishing.

Q&A Segment:

This week I answer questions sent by Don Conrad and Michael Jolliffe about photographing children in the streets and how to get a spontaneous reaction from your subjects in street photography.

Interesting video clip by Thomas Leuthard to illustrate the point in question #2.

 

New Street Challenge: HUMOR!

Capturing humor in a fraction of a second may be the most difficult challenge in street photography. Also we all have our own definition of humor and it varies greatly from one culture to another…

I invite you to go out and shoot some motion in the streets over the next couple of weeks, then upload your best shot in the comment section below. The contest ends on November 27.

Posts are moderated to prevent spam so your image may not show up right away. I will pick my favorite before the next Q&A episode, and post the image on the show notes that week. 

Tips for shooting humor in street photography: I invite to read an article I recently wrote for dPS (Digital Photography School) Using Humor In Street Photography.

I urge you to seek inspiration by looking at the work of great photographers such as Martin Parr and Elliott Erwitt

Pick of the week:  Sixty Tips of Creative iPhone Photography by Marti Holberg and published with Rockynook.

Special Announcements:

Visit our growing Street Focus community on Google+

The 2015 photo workshops are filling up quickly!! In Paris in January, May , September and October, Rome in April. Weekend workshops added in the US as well. I hope to meet some of you in 2015!

Samples of humor in the streets for more inspiration. The images below are the Copyrighted by Valerie Jardin.

84 Comments

  1. Hi Valerie,

    Here’s a favorite of mine for this week’s challenge. These are my grandsons as we were waiting for a table in a restaurant, sitting next to his Dad’s grandparents. This one makes me smile.

  2. I call this image the “Cane Gang” Captured this week on the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco.

  3. I call this “Mr Cool gets in on the scene” Cheeky young italian wanted to get in to the wedding photographs in Rome.

    1. For some reason only the jpeg icon is showing not the images. This happened previously. Is this a technical problem?

    1. Hello, I continue to have the same problem. I’ve only ever been able to post one picture. Every other attempt ends up with a comment and no photo. I’ll post on the Google+ site but posting in the comments here just doesn’t seem to work. Sorry I can’t participate

    1. Thanks for your patience. I guess you found the problem. What browser were you using? This may help others too.

  4. Wow, there are some fantastic images for this challenge!!! After looking through my files, I see that humor is not my strong suite in SP!!! But I did find a couple. Thanks to this podcast, I now know I need to look more for this. Here is my entry…

  5. Humor Entries (sorry but I don’t know if two entries are permissible).

    1. I caught a mermaid. This guy is obviously thrilled to be carrying a mermaid to the water. I was shooting at an event at Three Sisters springs in central Florida when I happened upon this shot. Like Valerie I kept my finger on the shutter release and waited for the moment to happen.

    2. Man Meets Manatee. What the heck are you??!! It’s fun to catch another photographer in a surprising moment.

  6. Humor Entries (sorry but I don’t know if two entries are permissible).

    1. Man Meets Manatee. What the heck are you??!! It’s fun to catch another photographer in a surprising moment.

    2. I caught a mermaid! This guy is obviously thrilled to be carrying a
    mermaid to the water. I was shooting at an event at Three Sisters
    springs in central Florida when I happened upon this shot. Like Valerie I
    kept my finger on the shutter release and waited for the moment to
    happen.

    1. What the heck? I went to try it on another browser and now it posted as a guest. INTERNET WHY YOU TROLL ME? lol

    1. Sorry Neil, several reasons why this might happen: The file could be too large. Other have changed browsers and it worked! I hope you try again 🙂

    1. Thank you Mark! Maybe you can join the next NYC workshop I will co-lead with James in October 2015. Registration just opened!

  7. The young woman on the left is almost the perfect lookalike to the graffiti on the wall. Too bad it was too cold so that she needed the warm jacket.

    1. Seemed to be an issue with posting, hence the guest. This photo was taken on the streets of Malmö, Sweden.

    2. Thank you Stuart, not sure why it’s doing this. Some changed browsers and that helped. In the meantime, commenting underneath the photo, like you did here, works fine so that I know who it belongs to. Thanks again!!

    1. Levi Shand here – after having confirmed my e-mail address with Disqus and logging in, the above entry was still posted by “Guest”. Not sure what happened, but it’s mine. Thanks!

    2. Thank you Levi! Sorry for the Disqus issues… Commenting on your image was the right thing to do so that I know who it belongs to. Have a great day!

  8. Hi Valerie I have a problem posting here,I would be happy if you can help me because the Image that I posted last night is not showing up here is the the caption.

    Kilburn,London 2014.
    Thank you.