The Difficult Ones - Street Portraits of "Scary People"

When I shot street portraits during New Year’s Eve in Wellington I had some moments when I encountered people that I would usually regard as “difficult to shoot” because their outer appearance is “scary” and doesn’t invite to asking them if they agree to having their portrait taken.

I am far from being a bold street photographer. I will never become a second Bruce Gilden. Gilden is an example for an “into the face” street photographer who doesn’t have any inhibitions at taking peoples’ pictures. I find it difficult to get into the flow and to convince myself to take the first step of approaching people to take their picture. I actually find it easier to shoot a person with who I have an appointment for a photo shoot because in that case the question “does he/she want it or not” has already been answered. But of course that approach doesn’t have the spontaneity that you find in street portraits.

So what about the “difficult ones”? During the NYE shooting I remember shooting two people that I found difficult to approach. One was the bouncer at a party establishment, the other one was a guy who was sitting on the edge of a flower bed in Wellington’s pedestrian zone. He was heavily tattooed, made a brooding impression and and it felt as if he would not be very approachable. But man, he looked interesting!!

I was lucky because I was in the flow. I had been shooting for half an hour and it had been fun and I had enjoyed this experience a lot. People were friendly, easy to approach, often a little drunk but not completely pissed, so I was in a real nice photographic flow.

So I just went over to him and knelt in from of him, holding my big Nikon D850 DSLR camera and asked him “would it be ok if I took your picture?” He looked at me and answered in a relaxed way “Sure, no problem.” He took his cigarette, had a deep drag and stared broodingly straight ahead. I was more than surprised. I made use of the kneeling pose that I had taken in from of him and shot him right from where I was in front of him. So I had this slightly lower perspective that helped with the expression of the picture.

The experience with this picture showed a very simple photographic rule. “You never know before you ask people”. And that is certainly an encouragement for a slightly more daring approach to taking street portraits.

What helped me very much was “the flow” I was in. I think it might be a good idea of describing this experience and how it evolved on that particular evening a little more in depth. I will do that soon in a separate article.

Happy New Year! - Street Portraits on New Year's Eve in Wellington, New Zealand

I had nothing better to do. On New Year’s Eve I decided that I wanted to visit the city centre of Wellington to catch some street portraits of the party goers in the hours before midnight. So I put my Nikon D850 in my bag, put the Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens on that I use for portrait shooting and started into the night.

My starting point was not overly good. I was not in the mood for party nor to meet people and to converse. But I did want to shoot. Initially I could not even be bothered to take my camera out of my bag. But then I sat down next to an amazing blues guitar player in the pedestrian zone of Cuba Street. This blues man invited me to shoot him while playing. So I sat down opposite to him and started shooting. And next to me on that bench was sitting a little guy with tattoos all over the face, the smell of cheap wine coming from his mouth. He started talking to me in a mix of English and German language. And he made me aware of the “dangerous two guys over there that are for sure American spies. That broke the ice. :-)

I was sitting there, taking picture of the musician, of people sitting around him on benches. And then I took off, walking back into the party zone at Coutney Place. And all of a sudden I was “in the flow”. I sought eye contact with the people coming towards me, started asking them for their picture. The atmosphere was easy going, people where already a little tipsy and in relaxed and beautiful mood.

It really flowed. I walked down the place on both sides into all directions. And then I met those girls. They had a little too much alcohol, no doubt. And they showed me the Haka. Right into my camera. Full on. I was blown away and exacted two pictures.

Do you know the Haka…?

And it went on and on. Surprising and sometimes a little annoying was that nearly everybody that I shot took on a pose immediately. They are all Instagram trained!! Everybody does it. They put their heads together, hands up, fingers spread and smiiiile. It is as if everybody had the same trainer that told them how to take on the “right pose”. It is incredible.

I stayed in the flow for 2 and a half hours. Until I was really empty. Until I had really all the pictures I wanted. Until I was really happy.

The Sweeties

The Bouncer

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

RICOH GR III - Strong Contrast Black and White Pictures - Wellington at Dusk

Recently I went out late in the afternoon when dusk was starting to fall. I had my little GR III camera with me that I had put on high contrast JPEG shooting mode.

My idea was to shoot some contrasty pictures of the city (it is Wellington, New Zealand that we are speaking about) in the fading light, maybe using some street lights, maybe utilizing the light from the sky.

I hadn’t tried the strong contrast JPEG preset in that way before. I had shot some pictures on a beach and I liked the rendering of the dark tones. It complemented my style quite nicely. So trying this in the urban environment was a nice little challenge.

And I was lucky, I got into the flow.
You know the photographic flow? You immerse yourself into your shooting and all of a sudden nothing exists but pictures, scenes that want to be captured, light, contrast, maybe colors, a flurry of impressions that wait to be photographed.

This kind of flow lasts with me between an hour and two. Towards the end I feel that I am getting tired. It’s hard mental work, it is focusing on the environment and on composition and light all the time. Eventually by the end of a flow I get to the point where I feel that I have “shot myself empty”. The flow abates gradually, the rush ceases, the inclination to find yet another motif stops.

I love those moments of getting into the flow. It’s immensely gratifying and rewarding. And often the pictures that are shot in such a flow are good or even excellent. It’s a special mode and mood.

So, in such a flow I got myself during the JPEG shooting session. I found a narrow alley with wooden fences to both sides and, a street light and the bright sky at the end of this path. I shot this in many iterations. I will later come back to this motif.

At the end of my two hours walk I was indeed empty and my SD cart had filled up to a good degree. And I had the feeling of satisfaction and curiosity about what I might have found. I was keen on sitting down and processing my pictures and getting them ready to be shown on Flickr.

Flickr is a great motivation for me. The fact that I can show what I deem the best pictures in Flickr motivates me to shoot and to try out new ways of photography. Over the past 8 years this fascination and motivation has been continuing. Flickr is a great source of inspiration to me.

When I started editing the pictures on my computer I found out that they don’t have great “latitude”. This means that when playing with exposure, highlights, whites, shadows and blacks in post, the pictures tend to develop unnaturally looking white or grey areas that just don’t look appealing at all. Reason for that is that the pictures were shot in JPEG format which limits the way of editing them considerably. The pictures I took of the before mentioned fenced path suffer from this technical flaw.

The image looks nice. But if you take a closer look you can see that Whites and Greys have in some areas an unnatural look

The easiest way of circumventing this problem was to darken the pictures, to increase whites and to make local adjustments to the areas that should appear bright. In that way it was possible to create some pictures that obtained a graphical character.

The areas where I increased the Whites appeared bright and luminant and created a beautiful contrast with the dark or grey environment. This luminance you can indeed only achieve by editing JPEG pictures. RAW files are too flexible and do not “tip over” into very bright or deep dark tones, This only happens when we use JPEG pictures.

Sometimes it requires a little bit of luck (bad and good one) to achieve a certain look in pictures.