Street Photography

I'm taking Ricky Tim's "52 Week Photography Challenge",  an online class teaching design, camera basics, and Photoshop.  I'm enjoying it quite a bit, though some weeks the challenge can be daunting.  This week, for example, we were asked to go out on a public street and take photographs of people passing by.  Ricky referred us to the street photographs taken by Vivian Maier and Henri Cartier-Bresson and then we were off, out into streets, markets, parks, and other public areas to take photographs.   I went to the Boulder Farmer's Market and took about fifty images, of which these were the best.  

The image below focuses on the couple on the right.  But their son was off to the left eating some ice cream; see him in the striped shirt?  



When he noticed me I gestured with the camera and he broke into a big smile and I caught this image which is the one I uploaded to the class Smugmug account as my challenge photo for the week.  You might think his parents would be upset when they realized I was shooting him.  But I smiled and said "Such a cute kid," and they smiled back and agreed and that was that.

One of the surprising things about shooting at the Market was that hardly anyone paid any attention to me.   It probably helped that I was an older female, and therefore basically invisible and that the market goers were generally well off and at ease.  

I learned that you have to be quick to catch street action.  People are walking, biking, skateboarding, all in motion and you have to shoot quickly but calmly to get good in-focus pictures. 

In the class we've been learning various Photoshop techniques and all these images have had some PS editing; cropping, color adjustments, and cloning (to eliminate unwanted blemishes or parts of the images).   It was a fun challenge and I hope you enjoy seeing the results!