Random Warsaw

These images were made using a relatively small camera, a Canon Powershot A3200 IS. They used to call these cameras pocket sized. (They have been my camera of choice to give out to people participating in projects over the last few years.) The idea is to do some street photography without looking through the viewfinder (or at the digital screen). Take a picture low down or over your shoulder. or shoot from the waist like Billy the Kid. I was thinking about the work of old favourites like Gary Winogrand or William Klein or Robert Frank in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, often intentionally blurry, taking advantage of available natural lighting, cropped in a way that ran counter to the rules of composition. Or perhaps even Philip DiCorcia’s more contemporary work which, although they look spontaneous, are actually carefully posed street scenes. So, these were randomly shot over a week at different times of day and night. They are uncropped, but combined as pairs to give an unexpected narrative twist. As the Guardian suggests, perhaps we are all street photographers now. I once saw someone very like Cartier Bresson on the street in Paris, a small lithe elderly man darting about, eye glued to Leica viewfinder, shooting quickly – but apparently he gave up photography in 1975 (and that was 1980, so who knows.) Though in many countries, not least the UK, it is increasingly more difficult to work this way, due to suspicion and fear of surveillance, demands for ‘model release forms’ from commissioners and so on. This web page has some useful advice to budding street photographers and here's one about rights and restrictions when shooting in public spaces.

Here's another web page at Sleeklens which gives some very useful advice to the budding photographer. And for those street photographers who may be a little shy of the street itself, on this site 'thatsweetgift' you'll find, for example,  a brick wall photo background for making your own indoor street at the very reasonable price of $20.98.