Post number 1. Introduction and Primary and secondary subjects.

Post number 2. My street photography kit.

Post number 3. Clean backgrounds.

People boarding ferries at Shyambazar pier, Kolkata.

1/Background to this image.

I had been wandering up and down the Kolkata Ghats and took a wander onto Shyambazar pier. This was one of many piers that services the ferries going up and down the Ganges in Kolkata. I liked this particular area because it benefited from lovely evening light and it had quite a lot of what I will call ‘structure’ about. By this I mean shapes and lines that I could use for my compositions and framing. I could see whilst squinting into the sun, that this late afternoon was becoming very low and directional, casting long shadows and so the potential for silhouettes was obvious. I wandered slowly around and around the pier while some people were waiting to board the next ferry. I squinted, crouched and looked through things. The direction of this light was acting like a very strong modelling lamp to so many objects and textures, providing dimension, highlight and shadow.

2/Pre visualisation

So, I had in mind that there would be some sort of silhouette but since I find silhouettes can be a little over sentimental when they are the main focus of the image, I wanted a little more. I had noticed obviously that the light I was working with would produce effective silhouettes but also noticed that it was falling on other surfaces in interesting ways and I was particularly taken with the the way it was falling on this concrete structure in the left of the frame. The structure was showing a lot of highlight and shadow giving it a powerful 3 dimensional feel. In the middle of it was a metal grille that was really catching the light, and below that there was a poster with a face on it. It was this ‘structure’ these strong shapes and also knowing that whatever be in that heavily backlit area of the frame would become ‘silhouetted’, that became the embryo of my pre visualised image.

So, what did I have that I liked in the frame — what components were there that were interesting me.  There was the isolated figure on the right of the frame — a man waiting for the boat. There was also a bollard for tethering the ferry to and other strong shapes that would silhouette, like some structural items sticking into the air.  I love lines in my photography because they can compartmentalise your frame and can sometimes make frames within frames. All these shapes were  helping to give this image interest but they did not really make a decent picture yet. It wasn’t enough– there was no ‘life’ to it.

So I started thinking well, it’s a ferry pier — a ferry is going to come along and when that happens this scene will come alive. I had concerns about how much other people entering the scene might kill my lovely light falling on this concrete structure and obscure the silhouettes that I already had. Ideally  what I needed was isolated characters to come into the scene because a crowd of people would just become a big mass of shapeless black and probably spoil the light I had.  Obviously the sensible thing to do was to  just watch and wait so I waited 5 minutes or so until the ferry came.

I knew this much –my pre-visualised image would contain the ferry, people getting off it, the character silhouetted in the background and this structure to my left which was interestingly lit and would also act as a framing device. Anything else was open to chance.

3/Technical considerations.

One thing I haven’t said about this light is that it was falling on the water and when light hits an expanse of water at a particular angle it reflects strongly  and can become incredibly intense. You find it hard to even look in that general direction. Its little bit like when you were a really naughty child you used to shine the sun into other children’s eyes with a little mirror or bit of reflective plastic. You all did that right? Ok, just me then.

I digress. So, this light was amplified by hitting the water, so it wasn’t any old backlit situation we had here —  it was very, very strong. I could only look in the general direction of the light for a second or so without the refection hurting my eyes. Im a little nervy about taking shots into this kind of light because I understand it may be possible to harm your sensor, but hey, I like to live life on the edge and so I took a risk.

Technically I feel like my settings were more ‘considered’ than previous shots I have shown you in this series of posts, those shots were taken about a year or so before this. For me  considered settings are where you are not being wasteful of your cameras ability to render the best image it can. Because higher end cameras have come on such a long way in terms of delivering clean images at higher ISO’s, there can be a tendancy to get a bit lazy and think that the high ISO shot will be fine so you dont need to bother adjusting your other settings. Although at say 800 ISO, a camera like mine  (  a Canon 5dmk3) is going to be very clean and absolutely usable, it is not however  not going to be as clean and resolve an image as well as shooting at 100 ISO. An image shot at 100 ISO is going to give you the very best colour, contrast, detail, lack of grain and importantly dynamic range. Higher ISO images conversely will give less contrast and detail because the more noise (graininess) you have in your image, the less detail and definition you will have in that image. You will not get that same ‘tack sharp’ look at high ISO’s.

How do I keep my ISO low? I do this by not choosing a faster shutter speed than I need nor a higher aperture than I need. Simple as that.

So, the setting chosen for this image were:

Shutter — 125th — sufficient to freeze someone walking across my frame, at a moderate pace as long as they are not too close to me.

Aperture — F8. As much depth of field as I need if I am focusing a couple of meters from me using my 35mm lens.

If the far background and immediate foreground go a little to blur this will probably be quite nice I feel. My lens will also be at around its sharpest point at F8.

ISO — this low iso will render the cleanest image and is kept low by my shutter and aperture not going any higher than they need to.

Histogram for this image.

4/Psychology

Not much psychology going on here but there was a little. Because this is a wide scene and more often than not people most people will ignore you if they do not see themselves as being an intrinsic part of your picture. They will feel this however if you put on what appears to be a big and point it directly at them. It would be clear from my body language, where I am looking and because I have a little lens, that nobody in particular is being featured. In these instances people pretty will much ignore you naturally I would suggest because nobody thinks they are being isolated in your picture.

When Im scoping out different angles to shoot I do wander close to people, taking different viwpoints to see what works what doesnt. Tying to work out also if someone in the scene could be a primary or secondary suubject. In this instance I would probably just get quite close to people but look beyond them. Looking beyond people is a powerful tool for making them think that they are not an important element in your image. If however you make even the smallest eye contact with them then they are often alerted to the fact that you intend for them to be in your picture and make them a little unsettled so dont make that eye contact — you will show your hand and that person may move or become someone that is constantly now keeping an eye on you!

Tip – If you are going to feature someone in your candid image and you dont want to alert or unsettle them, look beyond where they are standing, you can already prefocus on something that is the same distance as them from you — that way they will be sharp in your photograph.

5/Taking the Shot.

So, I find myself waiting for the ferry to arrive and when it did obviously a lot of people got off and on it. I looked at the people getting off en-masse and realised they were were very poorly lit and the boat had also stolen any light that might fall on them.  The best light was still coming across the pier. Even if you have your idea set on one thing, go and take a look at what else might present itself to you when the scene changes — sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised.

So, I go back to my original spot and start shooting as people walk down the pier to try and make the ferry before it leaves. I was really looking for and isolated figure because they would make the best silhouette or semi silhouette. There were a couple but their body shapes and gait was not all that interesting — the lady walking past was the one that I was most pleased with. This was one of those situations that was time critical — this was not and ongoing event, it would happen for a few minutes and then it would be over, the ferry would leave. Sometimes you will have shots like this, unique events happening for a pretty limited period of time. Unlike say in an area quite close to here where they are making holy idols out of clay and straw — this they would be doing more or less all day so you can just stick with scenes for much longer.

6/Picture analysis.

Light – Very strong backlighting creating dimension and opportunity for strong silhouettes.

Composition – Follows broadly a rule of thirds composition with elements at third points. Strong shapes being used to frame subjects. The man at the back is put deliberately in clear space. The image shows lines going in various directions that I think help the picture along — lines are always good.

Gesture – The interesting texture and dimensionality of the left hand structure, the man in the background is leaning in an interesting way, the woman’s hair and the fact that the light is quite unusual — its an almost blinding light if you look at if from a certain angle — this I would argue gives this image an unusual punchy quality that qualifies it for me to call it part of gesture.

7/What could I have done better?

Well, the image is fatally flawed by the lady not being in clear space. Her shape is ill defined because she has someone to her right who interrupts her body shape dramatically. Perhaps I could have moved to the right a little but I would have affected my frame in a way that I didn’t like. Really this was one of those situations where you just wish someone wasnt there because they are killing your image.

The solution as much as I hate this particular solution was probably to put the camera in a burst mode and shot severa frames per second as she passed. In doing this I would have a better opportunity to catch her in-between they guy on the right and the pole sticking up on the left. I never put the camera on burst mode — somehow I just cant bring myself to do it. If I want to take successful shots like this I should probably consider doing that but for now Im happy to just take my chances.

The key is to try and put these elements in clear space and I failed at doing this.

Thanks for reading. If you have any comments about this post Id love to hear them. You can of course find me on Facebook for my latest work.

© Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

So, three months since my last december wedding I find myself driving down to Southampton for my second wedding of the week, the wedding of Maddy and David. Maddy and David were a couple I had never met since they had booked me from Australia over a year ago and like many of my clients these days we had only ever corresponded by email and the odd phone call. David, a vicars son was being married in the church by his own father — my second time in a year where that has happened and always makes for an interesting twist the to ceremony!
After the church we all headed off to the Weddings in the woods, a beautiful venue hidden amongst the trees in a secluded woodland in Hampshire. The guests were entertained with a bit of duck herding (that was definitely a first for me!) and Jamon cured Serrano ham being sliced by chaps all the way down from London’s Borough market.
All in all it was a wonderful day and a very nice re-introduction to my wedding season in the UK. Thanks Maddy and David for choosing me to photograph your wedding and of course, congratulations!

Post number 1. Introduction and Primary and secondary subjects.

Post number 2. My street photography kit.

Post number 4. Looking for interesting light — backlighting and silhouettes.

Boys flying kites, Main Ghat, Varanasi.

1/Background to this image.

Varanasi, somewhere near Main Ghat. Every night children assemble and fly their battered kites, arms poking skywards with fixed gazes. It was beginning to get a little dark, the sun was setting and light had softened. The sky was becoming less bright was now at point where I wouldn’t have to ‘fight’ the sun and everything was becoming more evenly lit. I might have to raise my overall exposure in order to see the boys faces, but this soft, even light would would mean that I could shoot from different directions and not have to worry about severe backlighting that would force me into creating silhouettes. Nor was it harsh front lighting that would have caused me to drop my exposure so as not to burn out the boys faces, which would have had the effect of making he background rather dull.

With this kind of light I was able to retain good detail more or less wherever I wanted it. This light was nice light, even though I was going to expose it and make the scene look a little brighter than it was in reality. I approached the boys and they  looked at me for a few moments, I just watched them without bringing my camera to my eye and within a few seconds they  got bored and went back to their kite flying. All they had seen from me was a general curiosity in what they were doing, nothing more than that. I wasn’t acting in a way to hold there interest.

2/Pre visualisation

The scene with the boys flying their kites allowed me to find a clean frame and clean, uncluttered frames are hard to come by, particlarly in India, where you can generally be assured of a busy background in most places you look. This scene however presented the possibility of a very clean background and you can often get this by simply shooting against the sky. Normally with a scene like this the problem is that you are on the same level as you subjects so you are forced to bring many other things into the frame which clutter the picture. In this instance however I knew I was going to benefit from the fact that these boys were on a concrete platform above me. This meant that I could shoot with my camera at a similar plane to these boys which I felt would be more pleasing camera angle than my having to get on my belly and shoot up. I wanted a shot that would put these boys in clear space (the sky) and also clear space in relation to each other (not overlapping). The interesting graphic shape of the broken bamboo parasol was a secondary element that I wanted in this image. I also wanted gesture from the boys — they had to be doing something interesting, ideally all looking up engaged with their kite flying in some way.

3/Technical considerations.

If shooting against a bright background where you wish to see peoples faces clearly you are generally going to end up with a ‘high-key’ image. That is to say an image that is dominated by light tones. You can see from the histogram that this image, this high-key image shows a histogram backed up on the white side. You will notice that there is a small space between the big shaft of light tones on the right but it is not hard up against the right had side of the histogram. That little gap shows that even though this is a  bright image, nothing is actually burnt out — all the detail has been captured by the camera. You will also notice that I am trailing off the blacks because they are not quite touching the left hand side of the histogram. These blacks, these most dark tones, I find are much easier to recover in post processing by just pulling the blacks back a little. I find if I have to pull your exposure up in post processing your overall image and skin tones will suffer.  Don’t fall into the trap that shooting in RAW mode is going to allow you to be sloppy with your exposures. To an extent it will, but it you have to pull your exposures around too much in post processing I guarantee you your  final image will not be as nice as if you had exposed it properly in the first place.

Histogram and exif information for this image.

Ok, lets look at this exif, this horrible exif, that had I realised I was going to be writing a blog post about this image two years later, I would probably have spared myself the embarrassment of explaining how badly I chose my settings. No, I would have chosen them more correctly at the time of shooing!

Here is an example of lazy, poor, wasteful settings on my part — why? This is because I allowed my ISO to rise unnecessarily high. I drove my ISO up high because my shutter speed was high and my shutter didnt need to be high! My shutter speed could have been significantly slower for what was happening in this scene. High shutters are required for freezing only if your subjects are big in your frame or, if they are not big in your frame, moving quickly. The subjects in this scene are neither big in the frame nor moving quickly and a so shutter speed of 125th of a second would have been more than fine. Many photographers will say that they shoot much lower shutters, I prefer to keep it moderately high to allow for scene changes.

Lets look at some very rough maths to explain this in more detail and sorry if is very obvious to experienced photographers. If I had used a shutter speed of 125th instead of 640th I would have reduced amount of light hitting my sensor by approximately 3 full stops of light. That is 125th — 250th– 500th. Each time you double that number it’s one full stop. (125th to 640th is actually closer to 3 1/3 stops but lets just round it up to the nearest stop for simplicity.)

This means if I had shot at 125th, my ISO could then have reduced 3 full stops and that would be from 4000 — 2000 — 1000 for the same exposure. So, I could have shot exactly the same scene at 1000 ISO and this would have given me a significantly different result. The image would have been a cleaner image (less noisy), sharper, had better contrast and better colour rendition. I took this shot a couple of years ago and I was lazy about my ISO because my camera at the time, a Nikon D3s is a very clean at high ISO’s — I would now however consider this bad practice. Even thought its pretty clean its not going to be as clean as 1000 ISO and there is a huge difference between and image shot at 1000 and 4000 ISO, even on the high ISO monster that is the D3s. Shoot at the lowest ISO’s you can — its a good discipline that makes you think about being really in touch with your camera by making you consider your camera settings in all light conditions. When you then come to shoot in really low light you will be then so at ease with all these settings you will be much more fluid in choosing the correct ones.

Aperture. So, why an aperture of F11? This image is shot at F11 because I want I wanted image sharpness in the primary and secondary subjects, those being the boys and the broken parasol. The very far background in an image is always going to go to blur at anything but extremely high apertures, e.g. f22, when you focus relatively close to you, and that background is a long way away. You can achieve wanted and unwanted blur even at high apertures, it is not simply a property of shooting at low apertures  (shooting wide open). You just have to be aware of your distance to subject and the effect that has on your depth of field. The closer you focus, the more background blur you will achieve, the further away the more overall DOF you will have. I warn you now, this is not the first time I shall harp on about DOF and camera to subject distance, it will be a element of almost every post in one way or another.

This is why when you photograph down on the beach for example, even at pretty high apertures like F11, if you focus on something relatively close to you, the background will often end up being a pleasing blur — This is because its so far away, it is then not contained with in that smaller depth of field.

For example Focus on something, with a 35mm lens 3m away at f11 — look at the depth of field in this depth of field table. The total depth of field is only 15.2 m and because the far end of the DOF is not ‘infinity’ the far background will blur.

Subject distance 

3 m

Depth of field 

Near limit  1.65 m

Far limit  16.8 m

Total  15.2 m

So, to recap, settings for this image:

Shutter — 640th, faster than it needed to be, 125th or even lower would have sufficed.

Aperture — F11 to achieve sharpness in my primary and secondary subjects.

ISO — 4000, a consequence of shooting at a higher shutter than necessary.

 Tip — experiment with shooting relatively close to your subject  at high apertures and see how much sharpness you get in your subject and how dramatically that background will blur.  High apertures do not always mean no background blur. You just need to get a bit closer to your subject and make sure you have a background that is very distant.

4/Psychology

A psychological element to this photograph is understanding something that might sound obvious. That is that it is a lot easier to photograph people candidly when they are engaged in doing something — in other words, when they are distracted. Here the distraction is is a pretty evident, the boys are busy flying their kites. Children in India, generally speaking, quite like being photographed. The big problem and I mean a really big problem is that they want to pose for every shot. Anyone who has shot in India will be probably be aware that the usual scenario is this.  The children see you and your camera, one of them asks for a photo, his friend joins him and before you know it you have 30 of them in front of you, eyes following your every move, jostling for position for photo after photo after photo. Sure, pictures of smiling children can be very endearing but thats not the kind of photography we are talking about here.

So, the basic psychology is that if you are going to photograph children, keep an eye out for children who are distracted. Either they are playing, working or  just being more interested in something other than you. It might sound like the most obvious thing in the world to take pictures of people when they are distracted but what happens in reality is we fight the situation, really trying to get those candid shots when those children, or indeed adults in some instances, are acutely aware of us and interested in our presence. I suggest ‚that in those instances we walk away and look for another scene, unless and this is important, we have a lot of time to wait it out. By staying and fighting that situation we make ourselves frustrated that we were unable to get the shot we wanted where  actually we should  have probably just understood that we were battling against human nature, banging our head against a brick wall. We were  trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole.

Ill give you two examples. I photographed in boys homes in Calcutta where the lads were almost impossible to shoot, jumping in front of my camera, egging each other on to try and get in every single shot. It almost became a game to them. Let me re-phrase that, it did most definitely become a game to them, and the game they were playing was ‘not letting the photographer get a single candid image’. I tried what would be my usual method, which would be to politely ignore them and wait. I would not shoot when they wanted to me to shoot, even though they were constantly asking me to shoot or jumping in front of my lens. I, on the other hand planned to bore them to death with my presence by not engaging with them and waiting for them to calm down. They remained resolute  however, acutely interested in my every movement and as soon as I tentatively brought that camera anywhere near my eyes, they went right back to  jumping in front of me all over again, kidding around, determined to be photographed. They were winning.

Luckily this was soon to change because miraculously as soon as they sat down together and watched tv or started flicking through comic books, ah, that was a different story. Not only could I shoot them candidly, I could get all kinds of shots, wide shots, go close and get tight shots, keep moving my position — it was like they were in a trance. They were more interested in something else than me. In reality I believe that groups of children are not really all that interested in you when you are shooting, you just happen to be a bit of sport for them until something more interesting comes along!

The second instance was a slum in Calcutta. It was completely impossible to candidly shoot here. It consisted of  one long narrow street and when we arrived, our guide and us two photographers we were like three enormous ‘sore thumbs’ walking down the road.

The nature of this particular slum meant it was really hard to blend in and disappear. There were no little lanes and alleys you could wander down out of site of the masses — it was pretty much one road. The consequence of this was that everyone knew we were there and every child could see what we were doing. We soon became a primary source of interest and were in everybody’s view no matter where we went. After a short while I think we must have been surrounded by 100 children, who as soon as I tried to take any form of candid picture, would alert the person I was trying to shoot ( always helpful)  and try and jump directly in front of the lens at every opportunity. Once more, not letting the photographer get a candid shot had become the game.

I think I got only one usable image from that visit. Some girls were skipping and I pre-focused on something on the same plane as them and then crouched down very quickly and fired off a few shots. The girls were distracted and this gave me about a 4 second window to get an image before they noticed me and started to pose and before I was mobbed my children again.  Another small example of the power of distraction.

For what its worth I do take picture of happy, smiling groups of children. I do this on a few different occasions. Sometimes when they ask me, when I feel they have  completely beaten me and Im not going to get any candids anyway, when their parents ask and sometimes when I feel like it. Mostly thought I will try and get my candids first and get the shots that the children want me to get afterwards. If you have a limited amount of time then I think its quicker to operate this way around. Once you have started taking the shots that the children want you to take, more and more can come along and it can be a long time before they get bored of you and allow you to shoot candidly. If however you have a lot of time you might be better off the other way round — shoot for the kids first and then go for your candids when they have lost interest in you.

Tip – be on the look out for already distracted subjects particularly when dealing with children.

Tip — when shooting children and you have limited time, politely ignore them and take your candid shots first. After that you can be more playful and shoot the shots they want.

5/Taking the Shot.

Once I had framed the shot with the clean background I wanted there wasn’t much more  to it really. I simply kept shooting as the children moved this way and that, looking for pleasing body shapes. I made small adjustments to my own physical position, moving from side to side to compensate for overlapping subjects as they moved. I reviewed my image and once I was happy with the composition, expressions and gesture I moved on to shoot from a completely different angle. I ended up taking a second shot I was also happy with, this time shooting with the parasol in the foreground, shooting the boys from behind which also allowed me to show the kite they were flying.

Tip — once you have taken a shot from one position, even if you are happy with your picture, before you go look at the other possible positions, you might find a stronger image.

6/Picture analysis.

Light – Soft, even, late afternoon light which in reality was a darker scene than appears here.

Composition – Lots of negative space by use of a clean background. Primary and secondary subjects.

Gesture –

The distraction and interest of the boys and what we imagine they are engaged in.

The unusual but graphic shape of the broken parasol.

The general nature of the clean background isolating our subjects.

The unusual angle this shot is taken at, allowed for my being on a platform lower than the boys not having to angle the camera upwards.

The boys looking in three different directions — a lucky accident.

7/What could I have done better

The ISO was way to high caused by poor shutter selection.

Boys feet are overlapping, if I had moved to the left slightly I would have eliminated this small problem.

Thanks for reading. If you have any comments about this post Id love to hear them. You can of course find me on Facebook for my latest work.

© Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Post number 1. Introduction and Primary and secondary subjects.

Post number 2. My street photography kit.

Post number 3. Clean backgrounds and photographing children.

Post number 4. Looking for interesting light — backlighting and silhouettes.

Warning: If you are sensitive to imagery of abused camera equipment, look away now. Then get a friend to close my website on your computer and delete it from your history.

So after my Street Photography, Psychology and Technique blog post Ive had a few questions about kit and thought it might be useful to disuses some of the stuff I use. I’m not a gear-head. Well, I am insofar as I like what I like and do search it out, but mainly I just want my camera and all my gear to be small, quiet and effective. I dont like anything flashy, I dont care how nice it looks and as you can see I do everything in my power to make it all look as ugly as possible. One reason for this is I don’t want people to think Im a pro, the other is I don’t want people to think my equipment is valuable enough to merit robbing me.

So, there you have the answer to the question most asked of me. ‘Why do you have tape on your camera — is it broken?’ Well, if people think its a piece of junk and moreover do not think Im professional photographer  then that suits me all the better. Similarly, I dont sport a flashy Canon 5dm3 strap but use a more comfy and discreet  20 year old Kodak strap.

Why the 5dmk3?

The 5dmk3 is the best all round camera  I have ever owned and is nearly perfect for street photography.

The bad stuff :

1/The dynamic range could be better. At 11.5 stops its pretty average. A relatively cheap Nikon d600 is boasting around 14 stops.

2/They removed the focus confirmation red dot in the viewfinder which was on the 5dmk2. On the old 5d2 your focus point lit up brightly letting you know exactly where you are focusing when you depressed the focus button.  For some reason I cannot fathom, this was replaced with a black square, which is very hard to see, especially if you are focusing on something dark. Well, I eventually got used to it and no longer even think about it but I cant help thinking though I might be missing the odd shot by the lack of its presence.

3/The review system of your images, histogram and blinking highlights is not simple and requires a convoluted series of  button pressing unlike Nikon’s system of toggling one button 3 times.

4/In an ideal world it would be a little smaller but hey thats not really a fault of this camera since it is a very typical size for a full frame DSLR.

The good stuff:

1/It is a hell of a lot a lot smaller and lighter than my  Nikon D3s!  Thats not really a plus point for anyone who hasn’t migrated from a big camera but to me its benefit since I have.

2/I have the feeling that Canon and a lot of other people do not realise exactly how fantastic ‘silent shutter’ mode is. I don’t think Ive taken more than 100 shots or so not using this mode. I can be pretty much shooting 1 foot from somebodies head and they do not realise I am taking a picture. It is the most discreet camera I have ever used. This one feature alone probably would make me prefer this camera over others. My eyes roll in my head when I hear people talking about what a fantastic shutter ‘clack’ their camera has,  noisily machine gunning it at 10fps and so loving that sound. I so hate that sound and believe it has no place in street photography where the last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself.

3/Attaining focus in muddy light and backlit conditions is impeccable. It is simply brilliant and Canon have made huge improvements in this area over the 5dmk2.

4/It feels good in your hand. Really good. Its solid and all the buttons are nicely placed. Its a good shape and the front grip is perfectly formed. A brief dalliance with a Nikon d800 made me run back to my 5dmk3 with open arms begging forgiveness.

5/The viewfinder is big and bright as is the review screen.

6/A two card slot, Compact flash and SD has saved my skin on occasions. I write large raws to the CF card and large JPEGs to the SD card as back up. I have not noticed that this slows the camera performance in any way. I never find myself wating for the camera buffer to ‘catch up’ and let me shoot again.

7/Another biggy — ISO performance. Excellent. For a relatively small camera the ISO is brilliant. As good as my Nikon D3S I would say and the quality of the noise is pleasing and not unlike film grain. I want high ISO cameras not because I want to turn night into day, but because I like a little depth of field in my images and do not wish to have to shoot at F2 when I would prefer to shoot at f4.…thats why cameras that perform well at high iso’s are so important.

Hoodman Loupe

So, what else is in the picture.

A Hoodman loupe —  essential for reviewing images in strong light. Its a bright day and you cant see if you have focused, cant see your histogram, cant see your blinking highlights? You need one of these babies. The tape shown is mine and  is there  to lock the focus in place — like a diopter on a camera you twist the focus to suit your own vision and Ive locked it down with the tape.

Thinktank Pixel-pocket-rocket memory wallet, most professionals I have worked with use these wallets.  I nice little card wallet which includes a space for your busniness cards and strap to clip it inside your bag somewhere so you dont lose it. When a card is used and full the convention is that you turn it around in the case, white face out.

Loads of memory cards. I dont use cheap memory cards,  I dont trust them enough. I generally use either Sandisk or Lexar 16-32gb.  Ive had cards fail on me in the past. I certainly would never dream of using cheap cards for a wedding — it would keep me awake at night wondering if my skimping had cost me an entire set of images.

2x 1 TB usb3 portable hard drives, these are Verbatim. All these hard drives have a habit of failing in my experience.  Back up your work twice, hide one of them in a different place to most of your stuff. Its also easy to run out of memory on your laptop so extra memory is pretty essential.  When Im away for a long while and Im feeling really anal I back up my best images to 32 gb memory card and stick that in my money wallet. Imagine you lost all your work while you were travelling, that little card in your wallet might save your entire set of best images from your trip.

Lexar USB3 card reader — the best card reader Ive ever owned. Always reliable and lightening fast image transfer.

One of those blower things — Pocket Rocket. Doesn’t get out much.

My 35mm f2. Canon or Nikon these are great. Reasonably good in low light. For everyday street work perfect. Small and light. I personally really don’t see the necessity for big, expensive 35mm 1.4 lenses for this kind of photography. Ill probably end up doing a whole blog post about why I love 35mm so much.

My 50mm 1.4. Only very occasionally used and serves as a back up lens. I might switch to this lens for portraits as it is more flattering to the subject and acheives more background blur than the 35mm.

Spare camera battery.

Whats not in in picture -

My MacBook air 15″ — small, light, powerful and good enough for editing on the move.

Matte Duct tape — Im never with out a roll.

A gang lead — A simple mutli-socket lead allowing you to plug more that one device into so you can charge up everything without worrying about extra adaptors or sockets. Get one with a surge protector.

A Fugi adaptor like this one. The best I have found and works well in India and South East Asia.

Other posts in this Street Psychology and Technique series:

Post 1 — Introduction and Primary and secondary subjects.

Post 2 - My street photography kit.

Post 3 — Clean backgrounds and distracted subjects.

You can of course if you like also find me on Facebook for my latest work.

 Why? Well, why not?

Seriously though I thought it might be an interesting to show a series of shots and then explain what was going through my head when I took them. Firstly Ive realised not much out there about the nuts and bolts of how experienced street photographers conduct themselves. There are very few books, magazine articles or blogs specifically on technique and particulalry the psychology behind shooting candid street photos. There are of course plenty of images, but information on technique and psychology is pretty thin on on the ground. Secondly, since Ive been shooting street photography for a number of years now and realised that my own photography, not just my street photography, has greatly improved by my practicing a particular methodology. I have developed these ‘tools’ over a number of years and of course still practice them. I also constantly seek to tweak and improve them on a day to day basis. What I have learned has ended up becoming a pretty simple system and a way of thinking that works for me. Im happy to share that with you and I hope you too can benefit from some of the things I have taught myself. You can of course if you like also find me on Facebook for my latest work.

Where to use these techniques.

All of the shots you will see in this series of images are taken in India. I could have chosen some from other countries but since I have been shooting predominantly in India over the last few years, they are the most straightforward shots to illustrate these ideas .

I will say though that these techniques may not work so well in say, New York or London. I think there would be cultural issues of privacy and there can be a certain antagonism to photographers taking such images. In India and most parts of South East Asia for example people are generally much less concerned about their picture being taken and have got more pressing things to occupy them than having arguments with photographers.

No, these techniques will work in some parts of the world better than others. I have however found people in Romanian villages very easy to shoot and similarly Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and as I say, India. There are no rules, you just have to get a sense of the place and how you will be reacted to. You will almost feel it in the air as soon as you take your camera out. Some countries will be very different to others and you may find rural areas easier to shoot than urban ones. A local photographer may get away with shooting more boldly than a tourist but I have also heard contrary opinions. In India for example local photographers are often challenged because their subjects often think they are journalists and are exposing (no pun intended) those people for some reason or other – perhaps they are trading without a license for example. These same people they may just view western photographers as tourists with no particular agenda. On the other hand, sometimes it’s the local photographer seems to have a lot more latitude when he’s shooting and the tourist is the one to be suspicious of. As I say. there are no rules — you just have to sense it, almost smell it.

All this is not to say that its not possible to take perfectly good street photography in the UK or anywhere else for that matter. I think its fair to say the kind of street photography practiced in these countries will generally be a different style. I am simply saying that the techniques that I concentrate on will work best in the kinds of cultures I have indicated.

What ‘kind’ of street photography am I dealing with here?

There are many different genres of street photography. Some photographers like walking down a busy street snapping people as they come towards them, others wait at intersections and shoot the subtle interactions of strangers. There are photographers shoot very successfully from the hip or shoulder and others again who use a long lens and pick out portraits of interesting characters, blurring backgrounds into a pleasing creamy bokeh. My own photography is classically based with simple, balanced scenes usually containing primary and secondary subjects. This kind of photography would be exemplified by someone like Henri Cartier Bresson. I also like a more contemporary approach with more complicated and layered images. For me the master of this style of photography would be Alex Webb. In each instance my frames will generally be quite broad in their content, having more than one subject. Backgrounds and often foregrounds will be intrinsically important in the compositions of the kinds of images I like to take — they will very often become framing devices in my images.

My style may of course not be your style. It may not even interest or be visually pleasing to you. However, I am sure that there will be something in the way I shoot and then analyse what and how I shoot that will be helpful to many photographers. It might be something that you hadn’t thought of, or just something that prompts you to consider making one small adjustment to how shoot the next time you go out with your camera.

A wider application beyond street photography.

I use all of the techniques I will be discussing when I am shooting any form of candid photography, be that reportage weddings and events, social documentary or street photography. The same principles apply when I am shooting people candidly in any environment, it just becomes a question of picking which of those tecniques will be appropriate to implement. In that sense shooting a street scene in Calcutta is not that different to shooting a documentary wedding in London. Both subjects will be slightly wary of the camera but if you conduct yourself correctly you wont have any trouble getting the images you need without making anyone feel uncomfortable or putting yourself in a stressful situation.

Conventions used in these posts.

These posts following this one that deal with specific images will

1/Background to this image.

2/Pre visualisation

3/Technical considerations.

Histogram with exif

Shutter -

Aperture -

ISO -

4/Psychology

Tip –

5/Taking the Shot.

6/Picture analysis.

Light –

Composition –

Gesture –

7/What could I have done better?

1/Background to this image. 

A simple discussion of where I am, what time of day, how I found myself to be there and my thoughts about the photographic possibilities of that environment.

2/Pre-visualisation.

Pre-visualisation - This refers to the idea of looking around you and imagining ‘potential’ strong images. It might be a scene that doesn’t even exist yet because the characters in that scene are not even there. Using your imagination you can learn to see what that final image might look like – perhaps you have the basic structure if the scene and one or two elements but the final image is not quite there. It needs more. Some character is not quite in the right place, some other neutral space in the scene is crying out for someone to be there. Perhaps what the people in your scene are doing is not quite interesting enough yet. Thinking like this you are pre-visualising what might be.

Seeing these potential images will encourage you to stop, look and anticipate strong images. Someone once said to me every time you see a shot, go ‘click’ in your head — it was good advice although I cant do it for too long. It needs a lot of concentration but it does make you sharper and more mentally alert when you do go out shooting.

Pre-visualistion might also be how you might think a shot would look from a different angle or a different light level. You can mentally walk yourself around a potential picture, much like I can in retrospect walk myself around images I have previously taken whilst I am writing this piece. The common feature is imagination. I can imagine myself right back in that scene even though I am currently not there. I believe I can do that because when I shot it I was thinking so intensely about what was going on, it became burnt into my memory.

3/ Technical Considerations.

Self explanatory really but this section will be about how I chose the camera settings each image. Shooting fully manual mode (M)is how I take 100% of my pictures and I encourage you to do the same.

I shoot manual exposure because only in this mode do I feel I have complete control over the camera. All other modes which include Aperture priority, Shutter priority, Auto and even Auto ISO will I believe produce random exposures. The only instance where this is not the case is when you lock your exposure and then make tweaks to that exposure with exposure compensation – I have tried this and personally found it to be more trouble than its worth. We do not want random exposures, ie, too dark or too light because our best images will be the ones where we have chosen exactly the right exposure. Once we have locked that in we will then have exactly that same exposure until we choose to change it.

If you are afraid to shoot manual because you think you are going to be to slow, just try it for a week. You will find that you get increasingly more adept and more comfortable with it. You will find that your exposures become entirely consistent and, like driving a car or riding a bike, it will all swiftly become second nature.

I will not condemn priority modes outright though. I know some people shooting Aperture Priority who have thoroughly mastered the use of it. It requires a completely different set of skills to do this, just not the ones I shall be talking about here.

This might sound a bit ridiculous but bear with me. Psychology in this sense refers to how I am going interact with my photographic subjects on a psychological level. This is relevant in all ‘people’ photography but particularly when you are taking candid images or at least images that are not posed. (I make this distinction because sometimes your subjects are ‘camera aware’ but not necessarily posing). Psychology is also pertinent to portraits but I shall deal with that separately. For the most part I shall be talking about unposed, candid images.

4/Psychology

The nature of candid photography is that we are not asking permission to take those images and moreover we usually want to take those images in close proximity to our subject – often only a few feet away. These two facts present a fundamental problem. By getting close to our subjects and then taking our cameras out we enter into a relationship with that subject. That relationship involves us wanting to get something from them and them not necessarily wanting to give that thing to us! That ‘thing’ we are battling over is their their inclusion in that image. Typically we may have other unspoken demands of these complete strangers — we don’t want them to look at the camera or smile for example! It can be a bit of tough ask.

Your subject may also have a set of things that he or she wants. This might be for you to not include them in an image or for them to not face the camera. On the other hand, perhaps they actively do want to be in that image, want to hold their child up for display or want to get their best friend in the pictures too. Most commonly what they want to be wearing a big fat cheesy grin and we don’t really want any of those thing do we?

So perhaps you can see that this can all become a strange mental and emotional dance you perform with one another, often played out at subconscious, unspoken level. That is why there is a psychological element to street photography. I am going to share with you some tips to help you think about how to interact with your subjects in this strange dance and those tips should help you get the picture you really want.

5/Taking the shot.

Once you have established how you are dealing with your subject on a psychological level and set your camera to shoot the exposure you want the next thing you need to do is start shooting, obviously! This section will cover the actual shooting the images and how you might adjust your physical position during that process. It will also cover whether you should keep shooting beyond your initial image and how to decide if you have really got the shot you pre-visualised. Perhaps the image you have taken is ‘close but not quite’ there and so you need to work the scene a little more.

Sometimes it may be appropriate and respectful to engage with your subject after you have taken the image. I shall also talk about my personal thoughts on this.

6/Picture Analysis — Light composition and gesture.

Light, Composition and Gesture explained.

I personally believe that Light, Composition and Gesture are the 3 main components of an image and if your image has strength in these three areas you will have an amazing picture. If however you are only strong in one of these three I would suggest that you may have a pretty good image but the key is to try and excel in all three if you possibly can. Whatever element you are lacking in I would encourage you to think about how you might improve it, it may be as simple as taking a step to the right, a step back, or indeed just waiting a few seconds more. I shall talk about looking at these characteristics of my images and asking myself how they could be improved.

Light – this is the quality and direction of the light. How interesting is it? How pleasing is it? Did you expose for it correctly. Light is the key with good light you can take a picture of almost anything and have a pleasing image. In bad light you will struggle. This is why you will hear photographer bemoaning ‘poor light’ so often. In short, the quality and direction of your light can make or break your image.

Composition – how is your composition? Whats interesting about it, does it flow, and is it balanced? Does it draw you in if you see it as a very small image (a thumbnail or the back of your camera) and does it make you want to open up and see it large? (If it doesn’t then I would suggest your composition could be better.)

Did you use any framing devices and where did you focus? Do you have an appropriate depth of field for that image? I could almost go on forever but these are the kind of questions I will be looking at. Good composition is very learnable and it does follow a number of rules in my opinion. When I first started my photography I think I had a reasonable sense of how to compose but was generally weak and limited in the varieties of compositions I was familiar with – along the way I learned a lot more. They became like other things part of my ‘toolbox’ as a photographer. You can do the same.

Gesture – what the hell is gesture? Well, to me gesture is the ‘hook’! Many will take gesture to be a simple human non verbal action, how someone holds their hands, a particular facial expression and so on. I believe though it has a broader meaning.

For me it is this: What is it about what is happening in that image is giving it that extra punch? It could be a glance between two people, a thoughtful expression, something about someones gait or a particular way they hold themselves. Perhaps its a posture that shows what a proud person they are or perhaps something about them implies strength, frailty, kindness or anger. Gesture might also be more subtle, a perceived relationship between people or things, something in the image that makes you terribly sad or indeed joyful. Gesture is whatever hook that is contained within that image and sometimes you may only be aware of it at a subliminally . It can be in a person, an animal or an inanimate object –maybe its the way a tree bends in the wind or a dolphin leaps. Gesture is that ‘visual ‘hook’ that will give your image extra impact.

5/ What could I have done better?

I am deliberately not going to make this a showcase for my best work. Many of the shots I show you will be flawed and I want to explain why they are flawed.  There will be other photographs that perhaps I am more pleased  with and will perhaps not have so many things to criticise . These images I show will be a mixture of work Im happy with and other work I now see could have been shot more correctly.

It is my belief that we do learn from what we get right – it’s not just giving ourselves a pat on the back, its an acknowledgement that we did certain things correctly and therefore can repeat them in a similar situation. Much of becoming a better photographer is about being able to repeat things you done well and not leaving your next shots to chance. Great, but what about our mistakes? Of course we learn even more from our mistakes because when we are getting to grips with photography ( which can be a very long time!) we make a lot more mistakes than we we take perfect images. All too often though photographers spend precious little time looking at the images that didn’t work and working out why they didn’t work. The concentrate on all the good images and throw the poor ones straight in the trash without even looking at them.

When I started professional photography I was definitely not shooting as well as I wanted to shoot – I largely overcame this by endlessly examining my work and asking myself what was it about a lot of my images that wasn’t pleasing for me? After every job I would spend as much time making notes about how to adjust my shooting for the next assignment as I would processing the images. After making copious notes I found myself constantly tweaking, constantly moving towards shooting in a way that I wanted to shoot. My keeper rate was slowly rising — I felt I was taking control over my photography by examining my mistakes and learning not to repeat them. You can do the same.

After each image I show you shall what could I have done better? Why? Because thats what I always do! Very, very rarely do I get a shot that even if I really like it, do I think there is not room for improvement. I make a note of this, either physical or mental and try to remember that next time I am in a similar situation. You can train yourself to think like this and I believe it will improve your photography if you do.

Ok, lets get to it. Here is image number 1.

Picture no 1. Primary and secondary subjects.

Young girl on the morning of Eid, Jodhpur.

Muslim families often sacrifice a goat or a sheep on the eve of Eid-al-Adha to commemorate Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail on God’s command. After the sacrifice the animals meat, usually from a goat or an ox, is distributed amongst family, friends, the butchers family and the local poor.

1/Background to this image.

It was about 7.30 AM, I was walking up a lane in Jodhpur, Rajasthan with a friend when I saw this elegant young girl standing beside a beautiful goat. She was a vision! She was brightly dressed for the Eid celebrations and the goat had been also prepared and washed for the ceremony which would occur later that day. Many families in Jodhpur had such goats outside their houses. They were beautiful animals, well cared for and I would often see children playing with them and keeping them more like a family pet than an animal destined for slaughter. I was already primed and looking for interesting shots that contained one of these fine goats and some other character. I had seen many shots that had come close but nowhere had I seen as cleanly arranged as this, with such a strong primary subject, who was of course the girl, dressed in her finery.

2/Pre-visualisation.

The first thing I noticed as I approached was that the girl was particularly beautifully dressed in a bright red outfit. She was unmissable and stood out like a beacon against drab grey of the path. The goat was naturally framed, standing in front of a large green door. The girl was also framed standing at the foot of a narrow lane. My task was to get a shot of her facing straight on to her, absolutely on the same plane her and the animal. I did not want a shot taken obliquely from one side or another. It is my view that such shots rarely work, since they have the sense that the photographer was either to nervous or unwilling to put themselves into a position where they would be square on to their subjects.

3/Technical considerations.

I checked my general exposure from that image and made sure there we no ‘blinking highlights’ on the girl and that her skin tones look clean. I might have zoomed in a little just to check this. The shot was probably a little light or dark on my camera screen (I don’t recall which) so I would have tweaked the exposure, up or down until my histogram looked nicely balanced (not clipped in the dark or light areas). The light was lowish so it was a compromise between aperture and ISO since my shutter was locked in at 160th for reasons I outline below.

I didn’t want to drive my ISO any higher than necessary and I wanted a aperture that would give me good sharpness in both subjects. I would not for example shoot this at a lower aperture eg at 2.8 and this is why. Even though both subjects are on more or less on the same plane and there is a reasonable amount of DOF (depth of field) at this focal length and camera to subject distance, I knew I would lose a certain amount of sharpness with my humble 35mm f2 lens. The shutter is possibly a little faster than than may have needed but it allowed for the possibility that the girl may start moving and so I would still have a sharp shot. I also get a little panicky sometimes about a shot that I really, really want and so it allows for a little camera shake!

Histogram and exif info for this image.

Shutter — 160th to allow for extreme subject movement and camera shake.

Aperture f4 — with a wide angle lens like a 35mm this gives very reasonable of DOF and sharpness. The girl and goat will be in very acceptable focus at this aperture. It also serves to blur the far background behind the girl.

ISO — at 1000 iso this image will be very clean shot with a high iso camera like my  Canon 5dmk3

4/Psychology

The problem here was going to be two things. The girl and goat were almost perfectly positioned. (If I was quibbling I would have preferred the goat to be slightly further over to the right of the frame so its head was more cleanly framed by the door lines.) My concern then was firstly that the girl would move, adversely altering the composition. My other concern was that she would notice me and either turn away, pose or leave. I knew that as soon as got near to her and turned square on to shoot my cover would be almost immediately blown and I would not have long before the act my shooting altered the present scene, which I clearly didn’t want.

As I approached the area where they was standing I pointed the camera and shot off a picture in her general direction so that I could get an idea of exposure of her and the area where she was standing. I deliberately did not look at directly at the girl and I certainly did not want to make eye contact with, this would have almost certainly lost me my opportunity to take this candid shot. Experience has taught me that even that small amount of engagement, a simple eye to eye glance, can cause your subject to turn away or move or react in some way that is not going to be helpful to your final image. I did not bring the camera to my eye but snapped off a shot from my chest and quietly turned around to view it, I was now about 8 or 9 meters away.

5/Taking the Shot.

So as moved forward I came square on to her I was now on the opposite side of the narrow lane, approximately 3 meters way. I quickly focused and recomposed the image in the viewfinder and shot a number of frames. I do not like to shoot with the camera tilted down or up if I can help it so with the girl being a little shorter than me and my wishing to get her feet in the shot, I bent my knees slightly so I wouldn’t have to tilt the camera down. My camera is always on silent shutter mode.

I kept shooting because amazingly the girl hadn’t noticed me or wasn’t concerned by my presence. I re-focused and shot of a few more frames. I re-focused because sometimes you think you have focus but you actually haven’t. It’s not uncommon to accidentally grab focus of something contrasty just behind your subject like a branch in the air and believe me, nothing is more upsetting than coming home and finding you have missed your killer shot because all the shots from that scene are out of focus – you can play it safe by focusing twice.

There is another benefit to keeping shooting and staying with the shot. ‘Working’ the scene because you never know how it might change to your advantage. I don’t mean shoot indiscriminately or motor-driving the camera, shooting 6 frames per second, but just take another shot and then another while you watch small changes in the scene. Since your camera remains focused locked and your exposure is perfect, all you are now looking for is subtle changes in the gesture and perhaps composition of your subjects. For all you know a someone may come out and start feeding the goat or an old man hunched over with a walking stick may start walking by. I have had lots of my best shots by just waiting a little longer, usually crouching, where the most fantastic things have come along and improved an already pretty good shot.

The girl didn’t seem to be uncomfortable by my presence. She looked this way and that so I shot her various movements. I took a few more shots and then moved on. In the end I preferred the original shot – I would say that 50% of the time I prefer my first shot but many of my favourite shots have come about from the unexpected change in the scene which I only managed to shoot because I waited. The beauty of shooting in India is that you never have to wait too long for something interesting to occur.

Tip –Focus on an area of contrast on the girl, the camera grabs focus most easily on lines where there is a strong difference between dark and light tones. Lines are good — her hair meeting her forehead would be an obvious place to focus because it has the double benefit of achieving that focus quickly and the girls face was very much the main area that I wanted to be perfectly focused.

Tip –Focus twice just in case you accidentally missed focus the first time.

6/Picture analysis — Light, composition and gesture.

Light – Early morning light, soft and directional.

Composition – Primary and secondary subjects balanced within two subframes. I nice block of colour in the green door and girl centrally framed starkly contrasted against the grey of the passageway behind her.

Gesture – Always personal, but for me its the relationship between these subjects. This goat has in some ways become her family pet, groomed and cared for, and he going to die this day. Another gesture is the girls red dress and her facial expression. For me these are visual and emotional hooks.

7/What could I have done better?

Unusually, I feel this shot was about as good as I could have got it and my exposure settings were about correct — I have fallen into the trap of showing a picture I really like for this initial post. Trust me, there are very few shots I ever feel this happy about, they can nearly always be better and in future posts many images I will show will be quite flawed.  Perhaps, I would have liked the goat to be in a slightly different position, i.e. a little more to the right, but since the goat was tethered it was unlikely to have moved much in either direction.

Other posts in this Street Psychology and Technique series:

Post 1 - Introduction and Primary and secondary subjects.

Post 2 - My street photography kit.

Post 3 - Clean backgrounds and distracted subjects.

Thank-you  for reading. If you have any comments about this post Id love to hear them.

© Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Mark Carey and www.markcareyphotography.com/blog/ with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.