..float like a butterfly

After a few rounds, Muhammad Ali would drop his gloves, offer his chin as target and never get hit. Having spent countless hours in the ring sparring, Ali had become an expert at one thing that would seperate him from all boxers that had come before or were to come after. He had become an expert at estimating distances.

If you are to float down the street and shoot from the hip, then you too must become an expert at estimating distances. And to do that you must hit the bricks and train, burn frames until you know exactly what distance to be and what camera angle to maintain to get a full body shot of a passerby.

No decapitations. No toe chops. Head and toes baby... float like a butterfly.

Bum Shot

It seems that just about every street photographer goes through a bum phase. After you've photographed a hundred shoppers zipping around with white plastic bags and smokers lined up against walls the bums start to look pretty interesting.
But is it right, is it conscionable? These people are down on their luck. But should you only photograph lucky people? Beautiful happy successful people? What about old people? Old people are easy to snap. They don't move fast. They can't chase you. They have "interesting" faces, and like bums they tend to be helpless and vunarable.

My point is that rather than ban an entire class of people, consider the individual and the particular given situation. And if it feels like exploitation then it is. It's a gut check, a "snap" decision -you may not always get it right - but then when do we?

The Speed of Light

Whenever I'm out shooting, and you can bet money on this, I end up in a wild dash across town to beat the parking meter.

It is at that moment I become oddly enough, like a lot of the poor slobs I photograph - under pressure to get some place with barely enough time to do it.

And equally oddly enough it is just at that moment I see people assuming strange wonderful postures, massing in complex geometric designs blowing interlocking back-lit smoke rings that waft ironically across erudite store displays.

Like runway lights whipping by an airplane window, somehow it is my motion, my mania, that generates these images. They exist in a parallel world where light rays shine on retinas but balk at glass - seen but seldom photographed.

140L Grip

Sometimes the best shot is not in front of you but to your left or right or behind you or some point in between. And sometimes, a lot of times, you can't turn and face the subject 'cause if you do the shot won't be there anymore. So you need to develop goofy grips - weird ways of holding the camera that allow aiming in different directions while maintaining a secure platform to trip the shutter.

One that I use often is the 140L - camera braced securely against arm and chest with the lens pointing one hundred forty degrees to the left of center. This grip is amazingly stable and remarkably accurate to "sight". If shoulders are kept square when you turn your head you will be looking in the same 140 degree direction as the lens. What you see will be what you get. As always misdirection need be applied as well to make it work.

"Noticed" - (c)bongo 2005 - was made possible with the help of the 140L goofy grip.

The Fifth Law

I had nothing that day when I saw two girls, a bleached blonde and a green-dye job - kissing. I ducked in a doorway, the only decent angle I could find. I had just a second to guess an exposure, set the aperture and when I looked up there seemingly out of thin air was a Midget holding a can of Pepsi about two feet from my lens. On instinct I mashed the shutter, turned and with adrenalin pouring out my ears walked away and never looked back.

Crayola haired kissing girls. Pepsi touting Midget. Long strange shadows. I had one good shot that day I thought. I was the new Fellini, no doubt.

But the picture did not live up to expectations. I had caught the two kissing, but the blonde was obscured so you couldn't tell she was a girl. And the midget didn't really look like a midget - the sloping background and the effects of the wide angle lens had added two feet to his height.

In my mind I had seen a circus act but had taken a picture of three lovily people on a sunny afternoon. The only freak there that day I realized, was me. Somewhere in my quest to get "a shot" I had lost my humanity and had broken the fifth law of Street Photography: "Don't be a jerk". I would do my best not to let it happen again.

I was struck by how the girl's hair resembles a fish and how unlikely you'd be to notice that if not juxtaposed with the store display.

It's interesting how analogous fishing and street photography are.

Streets are like rivers. Favorite spots. The art of "being quiet" and elusive. Specialized gear. The thrill of the snap. The catch. The stories about the ones that got away. A certain braggadocio and sense of camaraderie that both fisherman and street shooters share.

Down by Law

I turned and in a heart beat found myself at the exact right spot at the exact right time.

I had a camera with me; in fact I had two cameras with me. But I had violated the Second Law of Street Photography - "Always Be Composing - always." Keep the camera strapped to the hand, the aperture set, the focus locked, the shutter cocked, finger on the release.

I had two cameras with me that day - in a bag dangling from my shoulder. I might as well not brought them. The Japanese might as well not made them. Niepce might as well not invented them. Muse Street had made an offer but I had violated the Second Law.

Fortunately if you violate the Second Law, you can often take solace in the Third Law. The bittersweet saving grace Third Law of Street Photography: "if you see it once, you'll see it again." No doubt.