SHOOTING FROM THE HIP

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Another street photography theme I enjoy also incorporates my love for street art. This capture is from Hawaii which has some amazing murals. I like to incorporate people to give a sense of scale and like here where the mural figure (pick your pronoun) appears to be looking at the person running past. This was take from the opposite side of the street using the telephoto and no need to act surreptitiously.
 
The UK laws are much the same as down under, quite liberal.

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The European exception to this may be Germany, I'm sure GroovyGouvy has mentioned they have quite draconian laws about street photography.
 
zenjenny said:
Aw go on John, post a couple of your favourites and tell us the story/stories. We’re loyal fans - but 200 photos. . . And probably not including info about the points you made above . . . Can we prove our love some other way?
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I would prefer some group interaction rather than love. Now that sounds weird!!

Don't think my images really do the subject much justice and as I mentioned most of the better ones have been posted here. If you or anyone else can't be bothered to scroll through a few photos I think that says it all. ;)

How about you show us some of yours Jen and if none exist get out there and create :thumbs: I seem to remember one of a group of people at a bus stop?
 
Starzee said:
Perhaps I am misunderstanding this. I was thinking this thread was “shooting from the hip” not ”street ue. I want to capture people being people without them putting up a front because of a camera, even it’s not top notch lighting or the perfect angle. It’s more of snatching an attitude or mood or maybe emotion. And the ”story” the picture tells will be diffrent to each viewer because each of us has a diffrent story to start with.

Of course that’s just me. Carry on!!!!:)
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I read a longform piece ages ago - two very well-known (except by me) street/people photographers talking about just that. ‘Slice of life’, unposed captures and/or specifically choreographed‘would you do that again for me?’
‘Look straight at the camera and smile/blow smoke/send a kiss or in one famous photo ‘point it at me and look aggressive’

Stunning images in both, of course.
I’m going to find that kid -with -gun image now :D


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couldn’t find the article but Cartier-Bresson & William Klein.

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sinnerjohn said:
You've kind of answered your own question there Star. What other type of photography would you want to shoot from the hip for?

Maybe I've subverted the thread a little and made it more about 'street'. Apologies I'll :zip:
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That was a rhetorical question which I said didn’t exist in a recent Tuesday Talking Point :confused: So I wouldn’t listen to me anyway.
 
sinnerjohn said:
Unlike Ted I think what has become to be known as 'street photography' has to include people, its a given.
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Yeah, well, I'm not so good with identifying genres. Mainly, the question only comes up when I'm trying to pick the category for submitting to a competition, and the last time I got a mention from IPPA, it was for an image I'd entered in Abstract and they moved to Floral. :confused::lmao:
 
I don't do a lot of people shots, candid or otherwise, but I have managed a few that I'm happy with. All three of the following were shot from the hip (literally), while walking, phone by my side in one hand and bluetooth trigger in the other.

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The first image gives me problems. I think it's the best of the three, but it's also the most invasive. Legally, I had the right to shoot and publish it, I think, because I was on a public street (literally, in the crosswalk) and they were in plain view. But I never posted it anywhere but here and never entered it in any competition because it felt rather creepy to do so.

The second image, no ethical or legal issues. She's a street performer, and she saw the version I posted on Instagram and liked it. (I included her Instagram tag and credited her by name). I never entered this one in any competition because it's quite severely cropped (due to being shot off angle) and the image quality isn't up to competition standards. I didn't really need to shoot this one on the fly -- I could have stopped and lined it up properly, although that might have caused her to look up, which I think would have been a loss for the image.

The third image, also no problem -- a street performer and a guy taking a photo of a street performer. Again, I could have stopped and possibly gotten the shot -- or possibly missed it in the extra couple of seconds it would have taken -- but I was walking by and just snapped it while walking (like the previous two). I did enter this one in a competition or two, but it never got a nibble anywhere.
 
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My usual method for this kind of photography:

I shoot while walking, phone by my side in one hand and bluetooth trigger (CamKix) in the other. Sometimes when I go out without the trigger, I use the volume buttons to snap the shot, but 1) that usually causes the phone to move even more and often spoils the shot, and 2) if I hold the phone so that I can get a finger or thumb on the volume buttons, I often end up with my blurry fingers in the image.

Since hip shooting is blind shooting, I always use the wide-angle lens to give myself the best chance of getting the subject in the frame. Sometimes I add the Moment wide-angle to the stock lens, which gives me an even wider capture area, about the same as the ultra-wide on the new iPhones, I think. An added benefit of the Moment lens is that I can hold the phone with my fingers behind the lens to keep them out of the picture.

Also, my captures almost always come out tilted, no matter how much I try to be aware of my hand position, so wide-angle lens gives me extra room for rotating the image back to straight without chopping off anything important. (Yes, yes, I confess my personal preference is to have horizons, streets, buildings, etc., be level and plumb, unless the off-axis presentation is there to make some aesthetic point.)

I almost always use the iPhone native camera app and shoot JPGs for these kinds of photos. I used to use burst mode until Apple changed the trigger for it, so now I snap off repeated shots with the bluetooth trigger. The 3-second Live photos would be another option, but that usually doesn't work out as well for me.
 
Another option for candid shots that I've seen a few people use (but never used myself) is to hold your phone up and pretend to be photographing the scene in front of you while actually switching to the selfie camera and shooting back over your shoulder.
 
sinnerjohn said:
I think maybe the best street photographers pick their 'spot' and then hang around waiting for a likely human to inject some magic...
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I suspect this is often how sdimbour gets such amazing pics. If not then she's even better than I thought.
sinnerjohn said:
sdimbour Sandra is another of the very few exponents of 'Street' on Mobitog. Maybe you have time to share your thoughts on this Sandra?
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Ah, I see you got there too.
 
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I wonder where the line is between legal posting pictures of people and common decency is. I suspect the amount of exposure a picture gets goes some way to dictating where the line falls. Identifiability has to come into it as well.
This could be any man.
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But not this man. If he saw this somewhere, he'd know it was him.
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Mobitog is a smaller site so the compromise I use is to post pics with people that can be identified here but not on the the bigger social media sites. It's a balancing act though in my opinion. I'm not sure I can confidently say I'm comfortable with my choices.

And for the record, if there's no people in it, it's not street photography, it's a photograph of a street.
 
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As rizole mentioned, there are ways to get candid shots other than shooting from the hip. Festivals and street fairs (in the street! with people!) are places where snapping off photos is usually the norm, so there's no need to be surreptitious. Two from the Day of the Dead festival in Cooper Street:

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The first one's got a cute kid, painted faces, tattoos, and a nice diagonal line of heads, but it's very busy. The second one is also busy -- that's almost a given in these situations -- but what tickles me is the red-haired photographer stalking the same pair I am. That's what we look like, folks. :D
 
Starzee said:
Perhaps I am misunderstanding this. I was thinking this thread was “shooting from the hip” not ”street photography”. ”Shooting from the hip would suggest images taken surrepitiously. If there were no people, why would you need to be subtle about it? I was looking forward to getting some suggestions, ideas and examples of others take on this technique. I want to capture people being people without them putting up a front because of a camera, even it’s not top notch lighting or the perfect angle. It’s more of snatching an attitude or mood or maybe emotion. And the ”story” the picture tells will be diffrent to each viewer because each of us has a diffrent story to start with.

Of course that’s just me. Carry on!!!!:)
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Good comment but may I suggest that shooting from the hips is street photography. And I agree I would like to hear from others and there experience
 
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