To shoot or not to shoot Photo

Photographer’s Note

When you're running in from the street to escape thundering rain, you encounter a security guard hand-holding an old lady down a flight of stairs in front of a shopping mall. It's the perfect photo opportunity. Your camera is in your bag, to protect it from rain obviously.

By the time you whip out your camera from your bag, you know that you have 1 in 100 chances of getting a clear shot. You grab the split-second opportunity anyway. You shoot, and hope for the best, and then you pray that the photo is not going to be blur and fuzzy. No such luck, but you put it up anyway under the glaring spotlight because you feel that the photo says something vital about Petaling Street.

Beyond the wayside stalls and the teeming masses, there's something very human about the street that sets it apart from the soulless shopping malls that are mushrooming all over the city.

I have revisited this place a thousand times and yet every visit feels like the first time.

rabani, sonafish, kschanna has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

rabani (9439) 2007-10-25 0:41

By the time you whipped out your camera, whatever scene that prompted you, had gone. The first rule of street photography is, whenever you take your camera out for a walk, the camera sits in your shooting hand, at ALL times and not some place you can whipped it out from. Just like walking a dog, the dog is always in front. So is your camera.

Would like you to know, grainy photo is always better than blurred photo unless there's a reason for the blur. Before going into a street, make sure your shutter speed is at a speed where motion can be frozen either from the subject or your own. Walking motion freezes at 1/80s. In this photo Bunny, the blur came from you and from your subjects :]

To your question to shoot or not, it's not a matter of how but when. You shoot when you see it.

sonafish (126) 2007-10-30 8:26

SHOOT!!!!! don't know whether you agree or not, rainy day is one of the perfect moments to capture candid photos. assuming people are running in the street and u are hiding in a less visible spot, people would care about their soaking clothes more than a random guy with a camera. always keep a plastic bag(in fact my gear bag also have a garbage bag :) to protect my lenses from raindrops), and my cam is always in ready mode beneath the plastic bag.

I'm a beginner of street photography :) , just my 2 cents