fujifilm
I guess it's about time I update my blog and just in case you missed it while posting it up on my other social media channels, here's a video I did in collaboration with Henry's Cameras to feature yours truly and the Fujifilm gear I shoot with.
Check out the FULL 2MIN VIDEO on @HenrysCameras as well as the rest of the #HenrysSpotlight videos here:
Footage copyright Henry'sCameras/MiraStudios
Wow talk about being late to the announcement game. I released my Episode 002 of "A Phraction of a Second" a couple weeks back but if you haven't seen it yet. Check it out in the link below!
In the 2nd “Street Vlography” POV tutorial, we explore the technique of using a cheap kit lens for street photography and explore how much our gear matters in getting good results.
Music By:
DJ Quads - "Life In Stereo"
●Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
●Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/djquads/
●Twitter - https://twitter.com/DjQuads
"Critiques From The Cutting Room Floor"
http://www.ryantacayphoto.com/blog/?c...
Special thanks to @elmatic for helping me get the clips of me shooting - https://www.instagram.com/elmatic/
Edited on: FCPX
Shot with: Fuji X70, XT2, GoPro Hero 5 Session, Samsung S7, DJI Osmo Mobile
In the 1st official “Street Vlography” POV tutorial, we explore the technique of incorporating transparent objects to give a unique look while shooting street photography.
Music By:
The Loyalist - "Amber" https://soundcloud.com/why_you_look_a...
Edited on: FCPX
Shot with: Fuji X70, XT2 GoPro Hero 5 Session
With a new year starts a new experiment and there’s no better way to really see what you’re made of than to try something you have absolutely no experience in and see how well you do. For me that’s video. I’ve always known that this medium has always been at the top and up until the last few years or so, it’s become so increasingly accessible for the general public to be able to create high-quality content that rivals what we see coming out of professional studios. I mean, for the longest time that’s been the case for photography - just ask any grumpy pro photog and the phrase ‘undercutting the industry’ and ‘weekend warriors’ will be said a few times or ten.
I guess I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and start kind of a vlog-esque web series focused on street photography because up until 2 months ago, I had no idea what kind of stuff was circulating around YouTube and I honestly found myself really captivated by it. I was curious to see if I could somehow merge this style of filming, along with point-of-view street photography, and post-production screen capture editing tutorials into one. Very ambitious for someone who didn’t know the differences between frame rates or even how to use any editing programs. Good thing iMovie is so intuitive otherwise it would’ve been super frustrating and I would’ve never gotten anything off the ground.
I’m still trying to figure out the best way to shoot video and stills all in one outing because honestly, it’s tough as it is to get a good shot if I’m not focused. While videography may seem to be a sibling of photography, it’s really more like the distant cousin, twice removed (whatever that means). It’s SO different you guys. What Im trying to say is that, getting my video work to match my photo level is something that will take some time and I embrace the challenge.
With any divergence from the path of stills and more specifically street photography, I feel that I will take a bit of a step back when it comes to the quality of work I’m doing with my shots. I look at it as a "1 step back, 2 steps forward" situation where hopefully the skills I learn from shooting motion pictures will somehow strengthen my still images.
I know one day I’ll look back on this video and see all the cliches, rookie mistakes, and the hack job I did on the audio, but if I consider something like this cringe-worthy in the near future, that just means that at that point in time, I’m at a much better place than when I started. To me, this is one New Year’s resolution that I hope to keep.
Anyways, enough talk (there’s enough of that in the video below) so here it is, enjoy!
Here's the next image up for critique. Right now I'll refrain from sharing my reasons for not posting this image but will update the post after 24hrs with the answers - once you guys had a chance to come up with your own assessments. You guys offered such great feedback with DM's on my instagram accounts that I felt that instead of keeping all this fabulous information for myself, that it would be better served to have everyone's thoughts in one place and use it as a collective learning tool for all. Feel free to leave your comments below on what you liked/didn't like about it, what could've been done better, and why you think I rejected this shot in the first place.
Cutting room floor image 003: : 2014-09-06 5:40pm 41mm (eqv) 1/500s f6.4 iso 200
*update* What I primarily disliked about this image is that ultimately it's just a picture of people eating. I remember being once told that the most unflattering shots of people you could take is of them either eating or caught in mid-sentence making a weird gesture with their mouths. Street photography to me is about respecting your subjects and not making them either a spectacle or exploiting a moment of vulnerability. While this isn't the most embarrassing image you can take of someone in mid-chew, it also has nothing else going for it.
The tree shadow, while it fills the right side of the frame, doesn't fill it with anything that relates to the human subjects. On the top left corner, it's pretty dead and those sliver of elements also don't add to the scene.
Just because the light may be good, doesn't necessarily mean the subject matter or the scene is worth capturing. I was attracted to the light and how it hit the people but when you really break it down, that's all it's really got going for it.
I decided to try something new with images that I never ended up posting for whatever reason. I'm going to use them for critique analysis and share my thoughts on why they just didn't cut it for me. I hope to use this as a tool to help others as well as myself. By sharing my process, perhaps future work will not suffer the same fate and overall growth can happen for everyone!
Featured below are the previous images I shared on my instagram stories from my @phraction_street page and here's what I had to say about each:
Cutting room floor image 001: 2015-04-26 6:50pm 28mm (eqv) 1/500s f8 iso800
In this shot I felt, that the entire right side was empty, the characters weren't all that interesting nor did the foreground or background elements connect in any way.
A lot of people commented that I could crop the entire right side out but I'm a stickler for keeping the original aspect ratio I shot in and extreme cropping will only make me a lazier photographer knowing that I can just fix things in post. I'm a professional photo retoucher and though I know I can do a lot of things but I'd rather spend my time enjoying photography instead of working ;)
Also check out Eric Kim's blog entitled: "10 Things Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography"and pay attention to the section about cropping.
Here's the next image I put up for critique:
Cutting room floor image 002: 2015-04-29 5:45pm 28mm (eqv) 1/500s f8 iso200
In this one I rejected it from consideration because there were too many objects sticking out of the guys' head, there were only 2 points of interest (and they're not even that interesting). I usually go for at least 3 if possible, and the red car overlap simply bugs me.
And that's where we're at so far. I wanted to put this up and future posts on something that doesn't disappear after 24hrs because I think this is something that can be useful and can be built upon even after the fact. If there are any additions or comments to any of the images you see above, please comment and share your thoughts so others may learn as well!
Continuing with the selects from the street photography project I set out to do in Germany this past summer, here’s some b-sides from my @phraction instagram feed of the day I visited Iserlohn.
First off, apologies for the lack of updates but since being back from shooting in Germany, I’ve needed to recharge my batteries (both literally and figuratively). Shooting 12hr days for 12days straight kinda takes a lot of physical/mental energy as does going through close to 4800 images and figuring out ways to organize them into smaller stories that are easier to share… like this one.
These shots were taken from my 4th day in Germany (July 25th, 2015), after traveling from Cologne to Berlin and only having been in the city for less than 2hrs.
I needed a warm up to start my shooting day and this random Kurdish protest march that appeared out of nowhere was pretty much the ticket I needed to really get right in there and shoot strangers on the street.
It was also one way to potentially get into a lot of trouble if things turned ugly …but anything to get the shot I suppose.
Now, I’m not a photojournalist, far from it in fact. I think there are significant differences between photojournalism and street photography and without boring you on the particulars, here’s a link to something I just googled that pretty much sums up what I believe so it saves me from having to paraphrase the article (aka I’m lazy to summarize) so here:
Photojournalism vs Street Photography
(just be sure to come back to what I’m writing here if you start venturing off to the land of external links;)
I’d hate to give the impression that I’m using someone else’s cause for my own personal gain but when an opportunity arises to get unique vantage points (like shooting from the middle of the street to get a wider POV of the storefronts in Berlin) then I’ll take it. I’ll just link to another article of what the protest is about HERE for anyone who wants to know more about it. #KarmaRestored
Interesting how sometimes you find yourself taking similar shots at different times and with different people. Kinda says something about what catches your eye by default. Personally, I’d like to say that “it’s a testament to my consistency” *Ahem-bullshit-ahem*
Aside from great pockets of light I was able to stand on a raised median platform in the middle of the street that offered a higher perspective. Then I was told that I couldn’t walk on there as a precaution to avoid upsetting the police who could book me for destruction of public property if I kept trampling over their flowerbed.
The police also had their own video guy to ensure their side of the story just in case things went ugly and the media (who I pretended to be a part of) were to try and twist things around. Honestly, I have no idea if that’s even the case here. I mean he could just be an officer who was excited to try out his new Sony 4k ActionCam.
Naturally, these types of events have people curious, so a ton of people could be seen from the streets looking out their windows/balconies and pouring out from storefronts to figure out what was going on. Also, it was a nice day so there’s that.
With the veil of being a “part of the media,” it was much easier to get in front of people and grab shots like these.
It was a great way to feel people out in how they’d react to having a camera on them, considering the right to privacy laws in Germany. I mean this was one of the reasons why I went there to shoot my project - to see how tough street photography is in a country that has strict rules regarding posting photos taken in public without consent. *here’s hoping I have some sort of “Canadian Immunity” for posting these while in North America*
Clearly you had some people who had suspicious glares whenever the camera was brought up to my face, but if you’re marching in a public protest, chances are, there’s gonna be cameras around. Still, I had no confrontations at all while shooting this event.
I honestly didn’t want to be restricted to boring shots of people silhouetted from behind.
So I resorted to boring shots of people in the front instead ;)
There were times when I wanted to find creative ways to obscure people’s identities but there were way too many people for that to have worked effectively.
I also wanted to push my luck and see if I’d get any negative reactions if I started to use flash but still, everyone was ‘ok’ with me going about and shooting as I normally do.
The police presence was heavy but everyone seemed to keep a cool head and luckily the only snag I witnessed was interrupting rush hour traffic.
Even though there were pockets where there was no light at all, Berlin had really colourful buildings that provided enough of an interesting backdrop for some of my shots.
As with any other protest, there’s a ton of flag waving/wearing and the toughest part was trying to not get so many posts sticking out of people’s heads. Having to get right in there and bob/weave to line up my subjects was something I’d have never been able to do cold turkey. Really glad I got to get a decent warm up earlier on in the March.
There were times during the entire trip that I wished I could just take off my shoes ‘cause my feet were killing me from all the walking, but at one point I just said, “screw it” and I ended up walking in my socks - but that’s a story for another time.
There came a point where I took enough twists and turns while blindly following the crowd to conclude that I had no idea where I was anymore. I decided that instead of spending so much time at this march, I should actually go and shoot some street while the light was still good. Also I had no idea what I was even going to do with these shots except share them as some sub-story on facebook or something. Kinda glad I was able to put something together here on tumblr to let you guys know that I’m still around and stuff ;)
At the end of it all, I just wanted to go back to exploring Berlin and as fun as it was playing photojournalist for an hour and a half, I really wanted to to focus on my “Anonymous” project which I hope to finally curate into something by the end of the year. There’s enough images collecting virtual dust on my hard drive and it’s a big weight off my shoulders to at least share this set of images with all of you patient people.
“Orange you glad I’m not twisted”
As of a couple days ago, it’s been just over a year since I’ve been trying my hand at shooting street. I think it’s time to share my process because I’ve made tons of mistakes and it’s good to poke fun at old (young) me and realize that future (older) me will also look back on this and make fun of present me - ‘cause that’s not a confusing sentence. It’s also helpful to see how (if) I’ve really progressed in this genre and use this as a bookmark of sorts. While writing this, I didn’t realize this novel of a post was so long that it was getting to a point that even *I* didn’t want to read through it. I figured it would be better off as a bunch of ‘smaller’ articles instead of one ginormous wordy word post (at least by my standards).
So here’s part I (of who knows how many) of my work in progress..
Instagram/flickr has been somewhat of a visual diary for me (cliche line, I know). To see photos that are not necessarily in chronological order but are in the order of what has caught my eye at the time is a great learning tool. I’ve noticed that I’ve gone from shooting people for the sake of shooting people to shooting scenes that mean more than just some dude who passed by me on the way to get some pizza.
[Rob Ford - Sep 2014]
“If there’s one person who might know where pizza is..”
[Dog Walk - May 2015]
I now prefer to shoot scenes like this (as opposed to one’s with Rob Ford in them..)
I shoot to learn more about myself. I paraphrase Daido Moriyama’s words in my head all the time when it comes to why I shoot - we are essentially capturing ourselves in the photos we take of others. This is in addition to echoing Garry Winogrand’s philosophy of not looking at his photos for a long time after shooting, which he did in order to ‘create an emotional disconnect’. It ensured that personal feelings/emotions at the time of clicking the shutter would not skew his perspective of whether a photo is actually good or not. Obviously, these are different yet complimentary ways of thinking and I subscribe to both. Some photos, no matter how much time has passed, will always evoke some type of emotion from me and I now understand that those are just as powerful and meaningful as the photos that are aesthetically pleasing for technical reasons. So in a nutshell, I take photos but don’t look at them for a while so I can see them more objectively when the time comes to share. But I still take into consideration the images that still evoke strong emotions even after a period of time.
This was taken roughly a year ago and has never been shared until now. It’s still an image that resonates deeply as it’s a reminder of the time I spent working at a retirement home while learning to be patient (a trait I now apply when shooting)
These days I tend to favour scenes influenced by someone like Alex Webb vs Joel Meyerowitz, who was one of my first main influences (and still remains to be). It’s not to say their images are night and day from one another, both are colour shooters that uses golden hour light and shadows to enhance their scenes (at least from what I’ve seen of their work so far) but I just find my interests are getting caught in the Webb more-so than the Mayoral.. wit.. of the Meyerowi.. ok so I should’ve thought that phrase over a little bit more. Anyways.. similar to how Meyerowitz first started, I some(most)times get overwhelmed by the busyness of the streets and it’s hard to focus on one thing, so I shoot… everything. Afterward, I look hard to see exactly what was in that scene that I was responding to primarily. The best part about being new to all this is knowing I’ve yet to scratch the surface when it comes to discovering great images so experimenting with different styles is fun and exciting still. Also, I can play the n00b card for a little while longer until I have to smarten up and stop making excuses for using bad photos in my body of work ;)
My interpretation of overwhelming busy streets which was taken with an unknown focus at the time - influenced by Joel Meyerowitz
My interpretation of scenes with some depth from foreground to background - influenced by Alex Webb (clearly I still need a lot of work to really fill the frame as he does)
When I scroll down my instagram feed, I see that 2 dimensional images and shots where people horizontally or diagonally pass by ‘things’ are what caught my eye primarily. To a certain degree I still shoot these ‘cause old habits die hard and ‘cause it was instinctively what I thought street was all about.. people in the street. “Stride-By” shots, people passing by storefronts, and people who were just different/interesting-looking were images that I would naturally gravitate toward. Now I’m consciously trying to be a bit more dynamic and sometimes overly experimental with compositions but part of the learning process is seeing what works and what doesn’t.
Not exactly a “Strideby” but an example of things that would catch my eye immediately. (too bad there’s poles coming out of their heads and no one was occupying the phone booth in the foreground)
I used to get very close simply because I felt I needed to. “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” was a Robert Capa phrase that echoed as I shot the street. Also, I think about the fact that he died because he got too close to a land mine. Now, I’m far less concerned of that happening to me in the city, though certain personality temperaments could be the equivalency during heated confrontations (which is also not really a concern of mine). *knock on wood*
Taken at Pride 2014, I found it was like shooting fish in a barrel to walk a street festival and shoot people up close because of how crowded the event was.
Recently, I stopped getting close for the sake of getting close nor do I just take pictures of people because, people. It’s taken me a while (though I haven’t quite figured it all out yet) but I’ve realized that street can be void of people yet still embody the human element. I’ve learned to take a step back and see the big picture or show more of the environment because a spacious setting can say just as much as a super close-up. Also, I find myself now shooting at a wider angle (28mm) vs the 40mm which I shot with exclusively for months. Maybe I’m getting it all wrong, in which case I’ll at least have this piece of writing to look back upon and show me what 2015 Ryan was thinking at the time. Clearly, my style and focus (amongst many things) needs to be refined and who knows if I’ll ever find what I’m looking for in my shooting, but at least the journey so far’s been interesting to say the least.
Well that’s all I’ll say for now. In future posts, I’ll talk more about what I do when I’m on the street (how I approach and photograph scenes) and what I look for and what I learn through my editing process. When I’ll get to it… well.. your guess is as good as mine. Maybe I should talk about how indecisive I can be and how that plays a roll in the decisive moment or maybe.. not. ;)
Facing An Unbalanced Reality
Sometimes if I come across an area interesting enough, I’ll either stop and explore the compositional possibilities or come back when the light is good enough. Luckily this day I had both (and bonus time on my hands) so I took the opportunity to take a look around at a place that’s literally a couple blocks from my pace.
Forgive the over-use of my shadow-selfie ‘watermark’ as for most of these shots I really wasn’t trying to be in them but I couldn’t really avoid it so I do what I normally do and make cameo appearances as compositionally pleasing as possible..
Ok so I know I could’ve tilted the camera upward a bit more..
It’s been a while since I’ve gone and shot textures and random objects so it was refreshing. Also great to be outdoors after being cooped up in the house hibernating, because winter.
Not having too many people pass by I had to work with what I had which pretty much meant shadows and a discarded flannel shirt.
It also gave me the opportunity to work on some angles because I’m usually not good at abstract compositions so lately this has been something I’ve been doing behind the scenes as these wouldn’t really fit well on my instagram.
I’m not 100% sure of the story behind this place but I’ll take a stab at saying that it’s probably not in use anymore.
Finally good to see the white stuff melting (probably 90% of the reason I included the snow in this :)
The place is wide open for the public and kids could still come to play but with the new playground that just opened up as part of the revitalization project of the area, I can see why they’d prefer to go there than here.
This composition looked better in my head than what came out.
And that’s pretty much it! I’ll try to keep the super-wordy posts at a minimum and see if I can share more photo sets that I wouldn’t know where to share anywhere else. I can only fit 10 shots in the ‘gallery’ at the very top so I used that area to showcase images that might benefit from a bit of zooming in to see the details.
There’s a common misconception that because I shoot people on the street, that taking portraits would be a piece of cake. If by cake you mean something like making an 18 layer Baumkuchen (look it up, it’s super hard you guys), then yes, it’s exactly like that. When push comes to shove though you do what you gotta do. Luckily Karyn is very patient actor/model that I had the pleasure of shooting for the streetvogs project about a month ago
Wanting to mix things up a bit from the usual candid street stuff, I figured shooting a portrait of someone who owned a pair of fluevogs would be the key. Going outside of my comfort zone and challenging myself to make mistakes is something that people do sometimes do for fun for growth and stuff. Seeing that I’m pretty much done physically growing, I might as well you know, do it for creativity. Because skillz.
I suppose that when your primary objective is to feature the shoes, one should probably do that. I decided to unintentionally be a rebel and… not. Because I forgot.. SO that happened and my only saving grace was to see if I had a full-length shot that I could crop into to get a decent shot. In this day and age where “megapixels don’t matter” has found it’s way into the average conversation, I found one time when it actually does. Albeit 16MP is somewhat low apparently, for web, it’s perfectly fine. Grainy and unsharp? You bet. But what I’ve come to realize is that the details we see in our own images (or lack thereof) are sometimes illusions compared to what the majority of people actual see - the big picture.
So here’s to refining some skills, silly mistakes, and shooting enough material to save yourself when your brain suddenly decides to exit stage right.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention… after all the effort in working on that shoe shot - I never ended up using it. I was reminded that the project was about the ‘unique souls’ more than the 'unique soles’ so all that work retouching it, kinda went out the window. But for anyone curious, here’s what the original shot, the cropped shot, and the retouched version ultimately looked like…
(click here to see it larger)
I got pretty excited to receive an order from www.artisanobscura.com (or instagram) to outfit my cameras with these wooden hotshoe covers and soft shutter releases that I’ve always been curious about. And who doesn’t like to get stuff in the mail?
Now far be it for me to post any “camera pron” because I’m a firm advocate that it doesn’t really matter what camera you shoot with. In fact when anyone ever asks, ‘mirrorless digital’ is my response so you know I’m not walking around with a huge DSLR or camera phone to shoot street. Everyone’s needs are different and I say don’t trust anyone who tells you what camera to buy without knowing what you shoot… and don’t take candy from strangers because, reasons.
What is important to me is how responsive my cameras are. This means more to me when capturing the moment than anything else. I got these because they’re supposed to modulate your finger pressure, thus improving your timing and it also makes you really cool (as if I wasn’t already…pff - well at least that’s what my mom tells me;)
Anyways, I’ll be shooting with these on both cameras to see if the rumours are true, and let you guys know what I find sometime next couple weeks.