This is one of a series of images taken at a recent demonstration/carnival/procession/etc. in East Village, NYC, NY. Canon Elan 7E, 100-400mm IS, Provia 100F, natural light.

Note that the lens used was a huge help. I was able to fill the frame with head-and-shoulders from far enough away so that I did not have to get into people's faces (yeah, yeah, I know, it isn't really street photography unless you do :-)) with my camera. At the same time it being image-stabilized allowed me to easily hand-hold a 400mm lens.

-- Akor (eye@kaax.org), June 04, 2001

Answers

Painted People!

OK, so explain to me why street photography has to be 'in your face'.

I don't do a lot of that type of shooting but when I do I find that I'm generally more comfortable and the results are a lot better when I use something in the range of 100mm to 200mm, unless of course I'm shooting 'mob scenes'.

BTW, nice image.

Dick

-- Richard Tope (RTope@yahoo.com), June 04, 2001.

Street photography

OK, so explain to me why street photography has to be 'in your face'.

Well, first of all there was a smiley there. But still, street photography was brought into prominence by people like Henry Cartier-Bresson who used 50mm lens which necessitated being in someone's face in order to get decent pictures. Remember the famous Robert Capa's dictum? "If you don't like your pictures, get closer".

There are obvious technical problems to shooting street scenes from afar: telephotos are big, heavy, and conspicuous; it's hard to hand-hold them and a tripod restricts your mobility and makes you yet more conspicuous.

By the way, medium telephotos (100-200mm) still force you to be in someone's face if you want that face to fill the frame. My point was that this (and other similar photos) were made possible by a set of fairly unusual circumstances: (1) The lens could zoom out to 400mm so I could stay far away; (2) The lens was IS so I could hand-hold; (3) This was a street festival/carnival/procession/etc. so there were a few photogs around and people were not (well, not all that) self-conscious about being photographed.

Anyway, I would probably argue that the genre of these images is candid portraits and not street photography. Street photography shows people in context and in this case I was concentrating on just faces.

-- Akor (eye@kaax.org), June 05, 2001.

Street Photography

You're right - I missed the 'smiley'. But don't take my comment as negative criticism. This shot (and I really like it) could not have been taken with a shorter lens without affecting the facial expression because the subject would have been much more aware of your presence.

For street fairs, festivals, etc. I like the 28-135 IS, but it's sometimes a little short on the long end even for some environmental shots.

-- Richard Tope (RTope@yahoo.com), June 05, 2001.

Is there too much yellow, or am I just looking at this with a jaundiced eye.

-- Jeff Polaski (polaski@acm.org), June 05, 2001.

Jaundice

Is there too much yellow, or am I just looking at this with a jaundiced eye

Both. ;-)

This is actual color, by the way. There was no Photoshop manipulation except for cleaning up and adding a bit of contrast. Look at the title -- she is one of the painted people. The face was actually covered with paint, yellow in this case.

-- Akor (eye@kaax.org), June 05, 2001.