Manchester Street Photography Workshop - at 50mm f2
One of my FAVE was to teach is via a ‘Walkabout’, so rather than pick a spot and hardly move we literally walk along SLOWLY and shoot anything that appeals
This can be architecture, graffiti, art installations, abstracts, colour, contrast, shade, texture etc. and even people too
Generally when I shoot ‘Street Photography’ I mean just that, literally the streets themselves, and this is how we started on my recent Bespoke 1-2-2 Teaching (that’s me and 2 others I’m teaching, as opposed to a 1-2-1 or at most a 1-2-3) in Manchester
As I’m always keen to challenge myself too, and to create images useful for BLOGS such as this one, I decided to shoot ONLY on a 50mm lens and ONLY at f2
In many instances, its the shallow Depth of Field (DoF) such a wide aperture brings that helps to direct the viewer’s eye into what the subject is; but as you’ll see on some of the buildings in this set, when they are quite far away with nothing close acting as Framing or Layering, then the apparent shallow DoF just isn’t obvious at all; which means the choice of aperture becomes almost redundant!
I wasn’t so ‘cruel’ with my attendees on this Walkabout lol, so they used Zoom lenses with equivalent focal ranges of 16-120mm (one had a crop body the other full-frame) and the variety of images captured was immense!
Despite my primary role being teaching, I still came away with over 100 ‘Keepers’, mostly shot to demonstrate a point or while they were undertaking one of my mini-challenges, but they truly filled-their-boots!
Towards the end of our session I turned the attention to what many refer to as ‘Street Photography’, where the subject is the people in the street as opposed to just the street. There are many ways of creating people based Street Photography images, but I tend to use two main methods as:
- pick a spot and wait for someone interesting to walk into the frame, then shoot; or
- ‘hunt’ for interesting people and ways of framing them in the light/street itself
Personally, I find version 1 easier and more successful overall, but there are a couple of nice ‘hunted’ examples here… the woman in the Japanese shop and the man sat down shot through a dustbin are my FAVES
And so to the images, or at least a selection of them…
NOTE: the B&W ones were shot with the intention of converting them to B&W as opposed to just ‘trying’ B&W later on the iMac. Learning to ‘see’ & use either Colour or B&W is something I’m always keen to get across to my attendees too
Would you like to attend a…
Manchester Street Photography Workshop
or perhaps a…
Leeds Street Photography Workshop
???
If so, get in touch by clicking HERE and I’ll notify you as soon as I have new dates
Or of course we could meet for your own Bespoke 1-2-1, or up to 1-2-3 if you wish to bring a couple of pals
The more you learn, and the better you become, the more you’ll…