Building a shot by sticking around and trying stuff out instead of "hit and run." Just rummaging around in the photography bin...

I've been trying to pay attention to how other photographers shoot when they are out in public places. Some "lock in" and shoot frame after frame from one position with one crop. Almost like they are afraid they haven't "set the hook" and the photo is going to get away from them. Some shooters are methodical and pre-programmed. You can see their brains working as they shoot. It's like they are following a formula: wide shot, medium shot, tight shot, low angle, high angle, done. But the one's who I think might be missing the mark are the hit-and-run photographers who whip their cameras up to their eyes, grab one frame and then walk off trying to look like nothing ever happened. Perhaps routinely driven away by fear and trepidation...

I really like to build shots and I guess I have a bit of the old formula in my brain when I go out. But my formula isn't all about getting higher or lower or lefter or righter, it's more about peeling the image down. I'll see something I like in a wide shot; like the young woman near the center who is eating ice cream while trying really hard to ignore the amorous couple sitting right next to her. And  the look on her face is classic. She looks angry. It's a look beyond concentration. She's really not happy. That's the scene where I start but not where I end up.

In the retrospect afforded by having these images in a triptych over my desk for years I've come to like the wide shot the best but I remember in the year or two after I took these images in Piazza Navona (Rome) that I liked the tight shot at the bottom were the woman is separated from all the people around her. 

There is nothing magical about these shots, although the tourists with the guidebook in the right corner make me smile; as does the man with the newspaper across his knee on the left, bottom corner. But I do like them all because they reference a time and place in which people lived more outdoors. Where the urban scape was lived in. Not like my city where everyone rushes around in cars and spends time in the urban scape only for events like concerts in the park. But not an everyday thing.

I was hardly invisible at the time I shot these images. I was using a Mamiya 6 medium format, film camera and I had a camera bag hanging over one shoulder. I was walking by and something in my head prompted me to stop. I guess it was the feeling of depth provided by the groupings of people in layers. And with an angry women with ice cream right in the middle. I went for the wide shot. 

But I didn't walk away. I tried to figure out what it was about the scene that drew me in and I decided that it was the contrast of the "happy' couple and the dour ice cream women. It seemed distinctly like a juxtaposition you don't see in "too cool" Austin. At least not often.  So I stepped in and framed the shot a bit tighter. And shot a couple frames. 

I liked the tighter crop but I stayed around to see if one more variation would add to my appreciation of the scene. I wanted a shot of the woman isolated with her thoughts and her ice cream. Maybe it works okay. But really, after looking at the images for years it was the initial shot, the wide shot, that I think is the keeper. 

I guess my point is that if you are motivated enough to stop and look at a scene it certainly makes a lot of sense to spend some time with it and explore a bit. I know many people would find it uncomfortable to get closer and closer but nobody really paid any attention to me. I guess most of us assume we're standing out when really the people in front of me might just have thought I was trying to get a good image of the fountain. After all, isn't that what most tourists with cameras do? 

 

I'm happy with the way a standard lens worked on a square framed, medium format camera. It's elegant. I guess these days I might be tempted to take a zoom lens, stand in one place and get the three different looks with a twist of the zoom ring. I'm sure the images would be fine but they definitely would create the same result as using one focal length and then zooming with one's feet. There is also more friction of the process when putting yourself closer to your subject. At some point you might step over the line....

And yeah, I know. It's called "Gelato." From Tre Scalini. They make pretty decent gelato...