Photographing people
Posted on July 6, 2007
Filed Under All, Photos |
The number one question asked by people who are aware of my photographer background is ‘How do you photograph people?’ Usually they are talking about photographing strangers - people they see on the street (though some just want tips for better shots of their kids).
The short answer is that, in my experience, there is no one way that’s a slam-dunk solution. Perhaps the best general approach is to try to establish a rapport by approaching and talking to your would-be subject. That was the technique used to get the photo above, a Frenchman who looks like he was sent by central casting. I bumped into him in a narrow rue in Montpellier in the early 70s (I may have been 20 years old) and started talking to him.
I asked him if I could take his picture, and he seemed flattered - so I brought out my Nikon F and 105mm f2.5 (about as sharp a lens as Nikon made) and got about 10 frames as I recall.
Another technique is to try to be ‘invisible,’ a technique that Henri Cartier Bresson was famous for. Cartier-Bresson was short, wore non-descript clothes, including an overcoat under which he kept his Leicas and he just blended in to the French street. I’ve tried his approach, with mixed success.
One technique that worked for me while I was documenting life on the N Judah train (’a petri dish of San Francisco life’) was to use a ‘heads down’ camera - like a Hasselblad or Rollei or, in my case, a Lumix DMC FZ50 with an adjustable LCD viewfinder - where the photographer looks down into the viewfinder and not directly at the subject. for some reason, the photographer just seems to disappear.
I also used a Pentax Optio X, which also has an adjustable, ‘heads down’ viewfinder. You’d be amazed how much difference that makes when the photog isn’t pointing a camera at eye level… people rarely noticed me, even on the crowded cars…
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