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Street/candid photography..any tips on how you "hide" your camera?
Hi, just wondering if any of you have any tips on how you "hide" or make your camera less visible...I use a film body and a lot of the time with a 20-35 f2.8 lens {black body and lens} and find if I sling it over my shoulder {looks less dodgy} sometimes I miss shots that I might have got if I hold the body and lens in my hand with the strap wrapped around my wrist. {which I do..but is way more visible}
What do you do? any tips appreciated.
to "sglmom".. almost all the best shots in street/candid are taken without asking the person for permission. People freeze up and put on their camera face when they know they are having their picture taken therefore missing the true emotion of the person in an everyday enviroment... and in this style of photography blending in is what its all about.
I do a lot of street photography when I travel, often in places that I don't want to stick out like North Africa, Cuba, or Eastern Europe. And I don't really 'hide' my camera as much as simply use distraction or nonchalance- I just pretend to be slowly walking somewhere, and I shoot from the waist in portrait, using burst- obviously you'd want a decent depth of field, and have to rely on autofocus or set your lens to infinity. It just looks to a casual observer like I'm simply going past with a camera in my hand- 99% of people equate taking a picture with holding a camera up to your eye. I'll often be looking up at a building or something as I pass- nobody ever suspects that I'm photographing them. I almost use a reverse form of panning, except that I'm rotating the camera in place momentarily as I move through space, if that makes sense. I'll shoot moderately wide and crop out what I don't need. I learned through trial and error how to approximate angles and composition by 'feel' doing this. Sloppy? You bet! Does it work- absolutely! Of course, I shoot digital, so you might not want to burn film doing this. I sometimes have my day-pack slung over the one arm I shoot with, and let it dangle to just above my lens- I look like just another dumb tourist, so nobody notices me. If I need to shoot in landscape, I've also pretended to be fixing something or otherwise attending to my gear, triggering the shutter with the flat of my thumb, and always at chest level or lower so as not to arouse interest while looking down at my camera. Again, nobody ever thinks you're shooting if it's not up near your face. I've also done this- pretended to be adjusting my shoe or something, or reading my guidebook, while my camera is pointed discretely at what I want; or I've seen a shot, planned the composition, and used my 10-second self timer with the camera hanging from my neck, hands nowhere near it! Sneaky, sneaky... I should have been a spy...
BTW, your site is excellent. My favorite shots are the skyscraper abstract with the tiny airplane, the elderly lady passing the tri-chopper, and the macro of the small stone with the white lines. The portrait of the guy mending his nets is also a great capture. Nice work.
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