Steve Leenhouts
New member
One of the great challenges for me, in using a small sensor camera (lens: 28mm equivalent) to record interesting moments of city life, has been the difficulty in intellegently framing rapidly changing scenes. Sean's article on Photographing Strangers describes how he approaches this:
Another factor that can be important for this kind of work is speed…the finder is just in front of my eye for just a second. It’s the last stage in the picture rather than the first. Before the camera ever comes to my eye, I have a fairly good sense of where the picture’s edges will fall, where the focus will fall,, and how the elements of the picture will be seen not only from the left to right but also from near to far. In other words, the picture is largely constructed in my imagination before I ever see it in the finder. - from Reid Reviews, Photographing Strangers
He is visualizing prior to the actual act of framing. I am not there, yet. In my own early practice I found that there was a lot of hit and miss, and the overall experience was that of shooting without any precision. Recently I find I am improving by paying attention -- as best I can in the split seconds available -- to just the bottom edge. Pre-visualizing the bottom edge would be a nice leap forward for me, but it is slow to come.
I would be interested to hear of other people's experience regarding the challenge of rapid composition in urban life photography. Does it just come with practice? Is it an inate skill, much like perfect pitch is for a musician? Are there any tricks or techniques to improve this aspect of making pictures? Can you show us some pictures?
Here are two pictures that I recently made that relate to this. Both are from an open taxi window.
Thanks,
Steve
Another factor that can be important for this kind of work is speed…the finder is just in front of my eye for just a second. It’s the last stage in the picture rather than the first. Before the camera ever comes to my eye, I have a fairly good sense of where the picture’s edges will fall, where the focus will fall,, and how the elements of the picture will be seen not only from the left to right but also from near to far. In other words, the picture is largely constructed in my imagination before I ever see it in the finder. - from Reid Reviews, Photographing Strangers
He is visualizing prior to the actual act of framing. I am not there, yet. In my own early practice I found that there was a lot of hit and miss, and the overall experience was that of shooting without any precision. Recently I find I am improving by paying attention -- as best I can in the split seconds available -- to just the bottom edge. Pre-visualizing the bottom edge would be a nice leap forward for me, but it is slow to come.
I would be interested to hear of other people's experience regarding the challenge of rapid composition in urban life photography. Does it just come with practice? Is it an inate skill, much like perfect pitch is for a musician? Are there any tricks or techniques to improve this aspect of making pictures? Can you show us some pictures?
Here are two pictures that I recently made that relate to this. Both are from an open taxi window.
Thanks,
Steve