Overcoming fear - 100 stranger's project

jonneymendoza

jonneymendoza

jonneymendoza

Caporegime
Joined
7 Apr 2008
Posts
25,139
Location
Lorville - Hurston
Hi all. i am a massive fan of this type of photography and always wanted to try it myself!

Well today i tried and failed to even ask a single person! i was out in the nice warm weather today around brick lane in london and failed to even attempt to ask anyone due to fear :(

How can i overcome this fear? how did you in effect break that mold and ask your very first person if you can take their picture?
 
hehe true mate! it was only my first run at it! will get more balls to it next time! might even try again after work.

Thing is, during lunch, i only have a limited time to do it so i should not punder around too long and just start asking people as soon as i step out of the office.
 
wildman said:
asking is the easy way though as they know you are / want to take a photo. Real street work is taking pictures without them knowing this way you get some very good candid 'in the wild' shots. When you ask you always get some forced pose.

If you are in London its quite easily actually to take photos of people without them even noticing. I took candid shots in london earlier this year and with the exception of some dodgy TFL workers no one even clocked me
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i disagree. not asking is the easy way. you have it the wrong way round. i have been taking candid shots all throughout this year and last year and its easy and boring to do and most shots are boring.

Most peoples street candid shots i see in forums are are boring IMO as they just snapshots in general that dont tell a story.

Its much harder to walk up to a person and ask them if you can take there photo. much much harder
 
That shot is ok and easy to do. try and approach that person asking if you can take his pic. that is more difficult to do for most people.

to walk up to a random stranger with a camera asking them if you can take a pic.

i have taken loads of shots like the above. no problem. anyways its different strokes for each folks, there is no define rules of photography. some like those random snapsots of candids, others dont.

see, i can do a smilar pic:



Street shots 3 266 by jonneymendoza, on Flickr :)
 
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wildman said:
I guess its horse for courses on personal preference on shooting choices ? Personally for me the substance is when I see natural reactions or people doing natural things in the city environment without being conscious of themselves doing it, and I guess other togs prefer interaction with their subjects ?
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Yes and that is what i said previously. some people like it, some dont. You see for me, i dont like candid shots but they HAVE to tell some story for me.
 
D.P. said:
When you ask a stranger their permission and they pose for the camera then you have just totally thrown the whole story and subject out the window, which to me is a cardinal sin of photography. The photograph a should have some kind of meaning, a story, a context. Some random photographer photographer snapping away at a random stranger does nothing for me. Capturing some essence of humanity as life revolves around a busy city scene has a much more powerful interpretation
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You wont get any meaning shooting random people just walking in front of you.

That is the point some people are saying. if you are focused on taking people shots, its best IMO to ask them permission, take there shot and have a chat with them if permitted.

It has much more involved then just firing away taking shots on people walking down the street. anyone can do it. thats not poper street photo imo.

proper street photo is taking a picture in the street that tries to tell a story and has good composition, the people, lamp posts, cars, etc etc are all proops that you can use together to create that shot.
 
D.P. said:
TBH (I will give my personal and unsweetened opinion here because I know you can handle my criticism),
This photo does absolutely nothing to me in the slightest and I find it utterly boring. It is a random stranger that is smiling to a random photographer after being asked to have their photo taken. Who cares. I have zero connection to that scene, I don't feel any story, I am not emotionally involved with the photo, I am not left wondering what was happening, who that person is, what they were doing, what are they doing now, what were the dynamics at the time the photo was taken. It is empty.

Technically, it is great and I see she is really enjoying her photo being taken, and you have produced a photo of value to yourself in gaining experience and perhaps advertising your business.


Most of my landscape photography falls the same way, I am just as critical of my own work as suffering from a lack of power, story, meaning, emotion, thought provocation.... But they make some nice photos for myself to enjoy and capture my holiday memories, I even make some beer money on the side.



If your photo was printed on A3 canvas and hanging in a gallery i would walk right past. If it was for sale I wouldn't think for 1 second about buying it. Now Rojin's examples strike a lot of interest and I am off goggling the photographer.
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to YOU it may not have any meaning/feeling but to the person who spoke to that person and took that shot certainly did!

photography is not all about what YOU and otehr viwers think
 
Rojin said:
It's a nice portrait but there is no story other than you have asked a random (I'm sure you didn't stop her because she's pretty? ;)) stranger to pose for a photo. There's nothing there to make you consider the photo further or imagine a story. It's a nice shot that worked for you as a business tool.



Stopping people in the street for an impromptu portrait isn't street photography in my opinion. The only story there is exactly what it is, someone has stopped to smile for the camera when asked. The interest becomes the technical competency of the photo. Which is no bad thing but it's a different beast to observational street photography. Of course you can add interest by having a theme running through the project to give social context perhaps?
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Yea i agree in a way.

Back on topic
i just took 2 out 3 people's pics today asking them :)

Was nervous first time round as expected but after the first person said yea, attempted 2 others within minutes later. last person rejected me. no biggie, she was not rude tell me to **** off or anything lol so all is well and not down beat at all.

quite a fascinating experience actually and really enjoyed the 3 encounters i had.

i am processing the images now and will upload them to my flickr later.
 
I managed to take 2 out of 3 people i asked.

here are the results.



My first - Renee by jonneymendoza, on Flickr


Portrait #2 by jonneymendoza, on Flickr


My aim is to encounter 100 people for this project! Hope it all goes well!

3rd person who rejected me i did not feel sad or anything and if i diddnt have to rush back home, i would have stayed around looking for more people to interact with!
 
Raymond Lin said:
I think projects like these are good to get your confidence, not really great in terms of getting things for your portfolio, with few exceptions.

There are 2 problems mainly.

1 - the people being asked are all too often vanilla. They are your every day ordinary person. Like the ones posted so far, its just a girl in the street. I don't see her life story from her face, I don't feel happy for her, sad for her or any emotions towards her. I don't know her story nor am intrigue to find out more.

2 - They are people of our own culture. In terms of human nature, photos are more interesting and intriguing when they are from another background. Whether they are more privileged or less well off than us. When they are "in the middle", we are less intrigued. If the subject were say really rich or famous, seeing a picture give you that window into their life, a life that you want a slice of. If the subject is for example, a homeless person, his face will reflect that with all the dirt, the tiredness and stresses which shows in a face which accumulates all the above on a daily basis and you feel sad for that person which hopefully your photo could capture a tiny amount of that story. A bit like this guy http://500px.com/LeeJeffries


So, if you want to do street photography, portrait style. Find someone either REALLY attractive or really ugly. Plain semi attractive people are dull, dull, dull.
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i fully agree with this mate and i will try and look for more interesting people to take a picture of. Please bare with me that this is the very first attempt at it so i need to do it in steps i.e yesterday was all about building the confidence to even approach A person.

i still need to build that up a bit more as i go along and then work on my communication.

The first picture i could have easily stayed and chatted to her longer as she was very open and was not in a rush but i was :(

The second person i met seemed to be more in a rush though and i will echo the quote below this. SMILING does help big time as the 2nd person did have second thoughts and the wya she was about to answer me i was actually expecting a no but i think because i was polite and smiled, she said yes in a kind of bizare look at me :)


An Exception said:
You forgot to smile, it makes a big difference to the reaction you get...
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As noted above your post. smiling does help. even the 3rd person i asked said no but smiled back at me.
 
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Hi all. just a small update really. i have not fully overcome my fear yet as today i had about 5/6 people to approach and only approached one person out of the 5/6 i wanted too and that person said no as she was outside her work place and was just taking a break before heading back to the office.

i guess it will take time for me to be "fully" confident in myself to approach all the potential targets i wish to photograph.

The weird feeling is that i am more gutted at not attempted all those other people i wanted to photograph then the woman who said no.
 
Cool thanks. i hope some of my fear will go at the end of this project though :)

Hope so hehe. You have done this project havent you? if so, how do you feel as a person now after it? do you still have a bit of fear approaching a random stranger or is it all gone?

i guess you cannot expect the fear to completely go after 4-5 tries.
 
im getting the hang of it. attempted 3 and one said yes and another was a maybe but shy.

here i will explain.

first person i approached said no so i kindly said thanks and moved along to my next target who did say yes(see my stream for more info).

i then approached a person who was having a smoke break who works for "benefits" makeup shop and approached and probably used the best chat up line i have on this project.

i went up to her with confidence and instead of going direct and saying "can i take your pic" i first said something like this:

"Hi, sorry to disturb you, i am doing a special photography project where i take 100 pictures of strangers i meet and was wondering if you would like to take part"

i couldnt believe i said that! usualy i keep it simple and short!

Her reply was that she is willing to do it after her smoke break if her other co workers are up for it!

So she told me to wait outside her shop and i did and when she came back, she tried to persuade her co workers to participate in the project. they was all shy and said to wait a further 5-10mins for another co worker to come back from her break!

at this moment in time i couldnt wait any longer as i was actually on my way back to my office when i met this lady outside of her shop. i may pop over again today and see if they are willing to. They looked willing to but shy if that makes sense.

the original person i approached actually did say yes but only if her co worker mates do it too lol.

ANyways the last attempted was to a girl who is working for some charity company who approached me about taking part in the charity. at the end of the discussion i asked if i can take per pic. she said she cant because she is working. i tried to persuade her a bit saying i can just take a picture of her face and not her uniform she was wearing. she said she cant but if i come back after work i can!

On another day, those two strangers would have said yes! but o well its all good, the fact that i am starting to engage on people more is good signs.

Man i should really create my own blog or something as i actually want to write down my experience. not just posting results of the successful ones.

Does anyone know a free blog website i can use?
 
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