Ah. Verona. Romeo and Juliet. Tourism. Italy.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I love shooting on the streets in Italy.  As part of one of our trips to Italy in the early 1990’s Belinda and I decided to visit some of the smaller cities like Lucca,  Bologna, Parma and Verona.  It was the same trip that found me dragging along my big, chrome Hasselblad 500 CM and my 100mm Planar lens as my street shooting camera.  While all of the cities had their own charming attributes it was Verona that stole my heart because of their wonderfully cynical tourist board.  They took the story of Romeo and Juliet and ran with it.  Right down to designating a small house and courtyard as the house of Juliet.  Tourist would go there to see where the star crossed lovers lived.  And the tourist board indulged them by also installing a telephone like contraption that, for a few coins, would tell you the brief story of the feuding houses in one of four different languages.  I noticed that the photo which graced the machine was from the Zefferelli version of the Romeo and Juliet movie.  So appropriate!

Of course we made the pilgrimage to the house.  How could we come all this way and not see it?  We saw a few adventurous tourists from other countries but we also saw plenty of Italians.  I saw this man listening intently to the taped message and couldn’t resist photographing him.  I printed the images and put them in a show a few years later.  Most people took a cursory look and decided that the man was some sort of shady character doing some sort of shady and illegal deal over the phone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He was just a local tourist, eager to hear all the news.

I have many images in my files of people on phones.  How was I to know back then that all the phone booths would eventually disappear only to be replaced by the ubiquitous cellphone?  The phone booth now seems like a romantic and chancy part of a past life. The cellphone like an empty appliance.  C’est la vie.

Street Shooting In Italy is the best.

Men standing around in Rome.

I love to shoot in the streets but in my own town very few people ever get out of their cars and walk anywhere so it's pretty tough to practice here.  In my role as the persistent contrarian I disagree with everyone else's take on what constitutes a great "street shooting" camera.  And I'll probably conflict with some statement I've blogged previously but then I do that from time to time.  The prevailing idea of the street camera is one that is small, light, unobtrusive and which can be set to a hyperfocal distance and fired without taking time to focus.  The ultimate expresssion is often thought to be a small, light, stealthy small camera which has a lens that can be manually hyperfocused and brought up to the eye for a quick snap without having to mess with settings.  The ultimate expression of this kind of "street shooting" camera has often be posited to the Leica M series cameras.  To read what I thought about the M cameras ten years ago you might be interested in reading this old post on Photo.net.......

And lately I've written some lines of praise for the advantages of the Olympus Pen series cameras (the EPL being my favorite because it is slightly faster and sharper...) coupled with the older Pen F lenses which are manual focus and easy to set.  And I do like the results from those cameras.

On a later trip to Italy I took along a Mamiya Six camera and it was a good compromise with its quick rangefinder, sharp lenses and fast operating parameters.  But looking back I am just as happy, perhaps more happy with images like the one above and the one below which I took on a vacation with my wife, a few years earlier.

Men on the square in Sienna.  Standing around.  Talking.

For this trip around Italy in the mid 1990's I decided to go maximally minimal and take on camera and one lens.  I decided on the Hasselblad 500 CM with a waist level finder and the 100mm 3.5 lens.  I brought two 120 backs along.  While it might seem to be a counterintuitive choice it was based on my operational comfort.  At the time I was shooting with this kind of camera every day of the week and my hands were totally used to the operation.  It just felt right.  

But if you've used a medium format, waist level finder with a 100 mm lens you know that it's slow to focus, slow to operate and slow to compose.  The idea is to make all of these things into a virtue.  I work slowly and deliberately and try to make sure that I don't disrupt the dynamic that drew me to the scene in the first place.  You could march right up to a group like this and take charge but even if they were compliant you will have changed every thing.  All the energy and all the aesthetics.  You could take the passive way out and use a long lens from across the square to secretly capture them but you would eliminate all the contextual details that you get with the normal focal length used close in.  The middle way is to make yourself anonymous and quiet.

My technique is to find the scene and move myself into roughly the right position based on my understanding of the lens's angle of view.  Then I look at the subjects and smile.  Then I compose on the finder and then I focus.  Then I wait until I am no longer a curiosity or an amusement and I wait until I see the texture and gesture that first attracted me and then I push the shutter.  I try not to intrude but I don't retreat.  If they protest I walk on and look for other opportunities.  If they ignore me (yes.  please.) then I continue shooting till I have the frame I want and I move on.  But mostly I wait and wait to see something that resonates.

With the H-blad and rolls of film with only 12 exposures patience and timing is everything.  There's no way you can "motor" your way to a good shot.  And what I've come to know with fast digital cameras is that there is still no way to "motor" your way to success.  Scene with people move.  They are  subject chaos theory.  They come together and break apart.  The best you can wish for is to see the pattern as they come together and prepare for the moment when the image peaks for you.  Then you push the button.  And the photo works or it doesn't.  You print it or you leave it in the sleeve.

If you feel so disposed I would love to hear your street shooting techniques in the comments.  What camera and lens, how you use it and maybe even a link to some of your work.  We might all learn more.

Thanks, Kirk