I have known some people, who love to take photos, said that they stop taking pictures in certain places (or cities) because that places do not giving them inspiration. These locations are too boring, messy, crowded, or dull and will not make a good photograph no matter what they try.
Yes, it is true that we need inspiration to do photography, because it is an art, and art need inspiration to be created. For one example, to say some certain places is “dead boring” or can not help to get a great scene anymore is never right. I believe “boring” is a relative word, means, this word only happen to some people, not all of us. Let’s say there is a worker who always goes to work at the same route everyday, then he will think his route to work is a boring place, nothing good to photograph there, but for a tourist from different continent who just arrived at the same city, same spot, most likely will think totally the opposite.
Bad place is a challenging place. It is the opportunity for us to get creative thinking, and start to seeing things in unusual way. In my experience, some of shots that I really like a lot, taken in a “boring” place instead in exotic cities or spots. Here some tips when I shoot in “bad places”:
This Place is Boring
We feel bored for a place could be because we passed the same routes everyday, and think that we have seen everything in that area, then we start to took these places for granted. Truth to be told, in street photography we search for a golden moment, that most of the time happens by coincidence, therefore it may happen anywhere and anytime. Always think that an interesting scene may appear in front of us in a split second, then gone for good after that. “Boring place” is all in your mind. Start to refresh your mind, and think like a tourist, think like someone who never passed these routes before. Pay more attention to smaller details like people’s gestures, facial expressions, interesting colours match on the wall, building’s geometry, shadow and silhouette spots. Because you go to these routes everyday then you will know this area quite well, which is means a great advantage to hunting street photo!
This Place is too Crowded
Crowd place is a good opportunity for us to looking for geometry shaped by people, especially if we stand in place where we can find an organise crowd. To create a photo with stronger point of view in the middle of crowd places, make a simpler looks by see the crowd as one whole big shape, not as limitless small distractions.
Geometry could be in any forms, vertical line, horizontal line, diagonal line, square, round shape, etc. Try to stand a bit further can help to see the crowd as one big subject.
This Place is too Quiet
We may feel that in quiet place there is not enough “life” to photographed. But, actually in quiet place we can compose photograph in better way, because we can keep scene simple. Simple means less objects inside a photo, which is help audience to focus easier to our point of interest.
Another thing to make our simple photo can looks stronger is using eye contact from our subject. Eye contact is such a strong gesture that feels like giving pressure to audience when they look at it. It makes photo feels more alive and make stronger communication to audience.
This Place is too Dull
Dull places could be at your office, your house’s backyard, local restaurant/cafe in your area that you visit every day, or anywhere that you think no one will start to take out their camera and start shooting. Time to get creative and get an image that unusual to see. Any visual art photographs are the key here. Silhouettes, shadow, reflection, framing are kind of visual things that we may find them literally every where, even sometimes we can start shooting from our siting place in our office! By learn to see things in unusual way will help us create unique photos, kind of photos that may not just looks beautiful, but also weird, quirk and surreal in good way.
Have Patience
Above all, the key of shooting on the street: Patience. We need to realise that award winning moments do not happen every time we want them to happen. Understand that we can not control all things / moments on the street, however we can control what we are about to do to capture street scene. We need to stay aware to our surrounding, try to predict people’s gesture or what they about to do, prepare your camera where it would be easy to grab then start snap photo (I usually hang my camera on my hand with hand strap), and patiently waiting till the moment happens. In some cases “fishing” technique might needed as well, we wait at one spot, with background object that we really like, and then waiting till the right subject fill our frame
Start shooting anywhere and anytime, as a street photographer we work as a realist painter to find artistic scene in human’s daily life. Reality is our canvas, and camera is our painter.
Keep shooting and be inspired,
Nico Harold