Street Photography Tips with Mehrdad Samak-Abedi | Pictureline
What draws you to street photography? And what do you enjoy the most about it?
In retrospect, a documentary about Bruce Gilden was the trigger that got me excited for the genre. Gilden is certainly a photographer who separates street photographers, but his style capturing life on the street is real and gritty. What really impressed me is his loss of distance between himself and his subjects. He is not afraid of being recognized photographing unknown persons, and he is not making a secret of taking a picture.
One of his statements especially stands out to me:
If you can smell the street by looking at a photo, then you know it ‘s street photography.
The fascinating and challenging aspect of street photography is that a situation or a picture is developing differently than I may had imagined before. I often have a specific image in mind, but while I wait and watch the surroundings, I discover new stories. Quite often it turns out as a so called snapshot, and other times I keep waiting at a spot until the subject walks in. What I also like about street photography (different than perhaps portrait photography) is that you choose your background first and then wait for people to complete your story. It is a total different approach of getting the one shot. I often don’t realize I have some jewels until seeing them on the computer. Street Photography certainly also has something to do with luck. It may happen that a snapshot of an unexpected moment is my photo of the day. To put it like Forrest Gump, street photography is like a box of chocolates for me. You never know what you’re going to get…….
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