Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Portland is for People

Congress Street

Congress Square People & Shadows

3 comments:

  1. Corey,
    Nice. Like the Portland people.
    More please.
    nitnop

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  2. Are these people you know, or strangers on the street?
    And if they are strangers on the street, do you approach them, or just snap their photo and run?
    And if you do approach them, do you do so before you photograph them, or after?
    And if you don't approach them, are you near them when you snap the picture, or are these shot with a long lense?
    I like your photos when they include people. And good stories about photographing people on the street? Just curious!

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    Replies
    1. Hi, thanks for the comment and questions. These are photos of strangers on the street. This is the "main street" of Portland, Maine so there are usually all sorts of people going about their business.

      These were shot with a 50mm lens on a Nikon D90. Here is an un-edited copy of this photo: http://i.imgur.com/hbLYQRr.jpg. As you can see, the version I had posted was cropped which makes it look like I was closer than I was.

      This 50mm length (it's actually equivalent to about 75mm on a full frame digital or film camera) is a popular length for street photography because it's not too close nor too wide. It's also a very small lens so it's less intrusive than pointing a 300mm+ lens towards someone. I'm rather shy so I don't really approach or talk to anyone when I'm walking down the street. The two photos in this post were shot while I was walking and then while I was waiting to cross an intersection so I wasn't awkwardly standing directly in front of them and looking through the viewfinder of my camera.

      Thanks, I like photographing people but I don't do much of it. I follow a lot of people on Flickr that are actual photographers who do beautiful street photography of people and I really admire that skill. I'd love to try some people-photography in a larger city some day. I think a challenge of doing it in a smaller city like this is that there are far fewer pedestrians and people are more suspicious of cameras than they are in larger cities. I don't have any good stories yet, but I'll share them if I end up with any!

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