“The Eyes are the window to your soul” – William Shakespeare
A quote that I simply could not agree more. Eyes are such important thing to translate the real emotion of a person. Have you notice that sometimes some news on television only sensor (cover) subject’s eyes instead the whole face? Because even if we can see the most part of their faces, we still feel know nothing about that person until we able to see their eyes. That is how powerful eye contact is.
If we want to documenting human life then what we need to do is extracting real emotion from a person. Eye contact is such an important element here, it will add more drama, tense and pressure to viewers. Feels like we put audience on our feet when we were capturing subject inside our photo.
Subject inside our photo will able to “strike back” to viewers. It able to creates certain emotion that help audience feel they have more connection with subject. It is like subject inside our photo try to talk about something to audience.
Just like when a stranger look sharp at us on the street. They might be simply did nothing and only made eye contact with us by coincidence, however, we still felt like they want to ask or say something to us.
How to shoot eye contact that able to create emotion?
Decisive moment and candid moment are the primary keys here. Shoot before they have chance to change their last emotion or reaction.
There are few tips how to capture eye contact and stay unobtrusive in decisive moment on the street so we still can freeze subject’s action in candid way:
Bring your camera everyday! (Read here)
Have full understand how to operate our camera, especially about triangle exposure. Bring our camera everywhere with us and always try to make time to shoot everyday. This way we will able to operate our camera optimally all the time and we always can prepare a certain setting that we need in decisive moment.
Learn to shoot with prime lens
Type of lenses that I love the most, because if I had use it for a certain of time then I can start to memorize its angle of view. This way I can see a scene and visualize a composition even before I raised camera to my eye. I can set my position (by move my feet) at a spot where I only need raise my camera and click shutter without delay anymore. Make a much faster process to capture a scene compare to use zoom lenses, because we still need to adjust focal length after pointed camera to subject. Read here for more about why I love prime lenses.
Pick the right camera for street photography
While it is true that we can just use any cameras on market to shoot on street, there are some points that we need to seriously consider to choose camera for street photography. Read here for more about how to find the right camera.
Eye contact as the main point of interest
Make sure audience’s eyes easily notice a strong eye contact inside our photo. Eliminate any distraction as much as possible. Creatively play with light, shadow, framing or angle of our camera to achieve less busy background. Read here for more about Do Not Shoot Busy Background.
Shoot eye contact with or without permission?
While it is true to shoot candid in split second to capture eye contact and real emotion of a person, there is one other way to do that: Ask permission first. Personally, shooting street with permission is still part of street photography. Main reason is because even though our subject aware we will shoot them, we can not control so many other elements such as lighting condition, their outfit, their reaction about our permission, and what kind of emotion they will show to us.
The hardest part of shooting eye contact with permission is we need to dig our subject’s story first. We can not just say hello and start photograph them right away, because if we do that most of the time we will only get “cheesy” smile without their true feeling involved. We need to create a type of conversation that will make our subject want to open some parts of their life story to gain access photograph their true emotion.
Question: If we shoot eye contact (without permission), will our subject angry to us?
My personal experience showed me that I never encountered anyone that see directly to my camera feel angry, upset, or shouting at me. Actually, even none of them ever asked me to check whether I took their photo or not. I think because most people out there will not think that there is a person who want to photograph them randomly and use their image for negative purpose. Especially if we shoot them in crowded or touristy place.
There are few times when strangers come and want to check my camera about what I just captured, but all of them are random person who watch me capture photo on the street, never my subject.
That is all about my tips to shoot eye contact of our subjects. Happy hunting and do not forget to stay have fun in street photography!
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold