Street photography can be a difficult genre when it comes to the interactions, and it definitely takes a certain brave personality to approach strangers and ask them to take their portrait. If given 10 minutes, how many portraits do you think you would be able to take? This fun video follows a couple photographers as they take that exact challenge.
Coming to you from Pierre T. Lambert, this great video follows him as he challenges a friend to get as many strangers to agree to having their portrait taken in 10 minutes as possible. I have to admit, I was a bit blown away by Lambert's ability to get 25 portraits. After all, that is a portrait every 24 seconds, and that includes the rejections, framing shots, adjusting settings, etc. It is really quite impressive. After all, I am a highly introverted person, and I would probably spend those 10 minutes just working up the courage to ask a single person if I could take their portrait, let alone come home with 25 successes. As fun as the video is to watch, it is also a great lesson in interacting with people as a photographer. Check out the video above to see the pair in action.
I can't say the I do it as a matter of course, but the first summer here in Winnipeg, my son, a wedding/event/photojournalist photographer, came to visit. He wanted to shoot stuff without the thought of a client in mind, so we went to the Exchange District to do some street photography. He was shooting some local architecture and I happened to see 3 young ladies taking pictures of each other.
I asked them if they were from Winnipeg and they stated that they were visiting from Minneapolis. They were very friendly, so I asked them if I could take their pictures. We ended up doing a mini 'fashion shoot'. :-) They got a kick out of it and this old geezer had fun. As an aside, they were using a real camera, not a phone. ;-)
The funny part was my son just couldn't believe his Dad could be that forward with complete strangers. The long and short of it, if you approach people that seem to be in a receptive mood to start with, it can work out.
Hell ya brother. Funny how our teenage boys think they are the ladies man and yet us old dudes get the ladies to smile and speak words to us. So cool that you showed up your son and had a great moment with perfect strangers. Amazing when you are nice to others they are nice back and oh yea, helps to be able to form verbal words rather than digital words. I am not a photographer by trade so I do not carry it around and yet I would do the same as you did for those young ladies. Stay young my friend and show that boy old men RULE.
Thank you, Alex! It is a nice challenge. If anyone is up to it in Moscow, let me know. Let’s do it.
The shooters' ability to get so many portraits -and strong ones at that, in such a short time, was incredible. That was a remarkable video. For. me (and many other photographers), approaching strangers and asking for permission to photograph them, is the single most difficult type of photographer there is.
While street portraits is a legit genre of photography, it isn't street photography. The definition of street photography is that it's candid. Unposed.