In early December I attended a street photography workshop taught by Vineet Vohra. The workshop was one of three that were offered as a part of the Miami Street Photography Festival events. Vineet, who is a Leica Ambassador, is an incredibly kind man, an incredibly good photographer, and an incredibly good teacher. Thank you to Susan Schiffer, Instagram friend who has become an in-person friend, for encouraging me to sign up for Vineet’s workshop.

Photo by Susan Schiffer. Used with permission.

If you are familiar with Susan’s Instagram gallery, which you can see at @susan.schiffer, you may be a bit surprised by this picture. Susan is known for her beautiful environmental portraits that often tend to reflect loving relationships. I am not certain I have ever seen her fill the frame like this. Susan was ready to go experimental in this workshop. The results were delightful.

I have never participated in a street photography workshop. There are all sorts of reasons this would be a hard “no” for me.

I am a lone wolf street photographer. I do not like to look at my images right after I shoot them. Imagine the pressure of going out with fifteen other people to shoot for two hours, knowing that I would have to come back two hours after that with five images to be put up for review.

For sure, if I had understood that I would have to have a portfolio of five images that were going to be presented in a student slideshow at the Street Photography Festival, I would have said, “Absolutely, no,” and maybe something stronger. In this case, ignorance was bliss.

How it worked.

Every participant was supposed to bring 10-12 pictures from a project or collection. The exercise was to arrange them in the most aesthetically pleasing order. One person in the group, Stephanie Duprie Routh, had a particularly coherent concept. Vineet arranged her pictures so that there was an aesthetic flow.

Photo by Stephanie Duprie Routh. Used with permission. This is a snapshot of our group as we watched and listened as Vineet arranged the photos in Stephanie’s project.

Photos from this project have made Stephanie a contender for the Emerging Photography Awards that will be announced in late December. You can see Stephanie’s Instagram gallery at @stephanieduprierouth, her Facebook gallery at Stephanie Duprie Routh and her website at StephanieDuprieRouth.com.

The next four pictures out of the project were taken by Stephanie. They are used with permission.

This is the first picture the bottom row

This picture was placed next because of the color match.

The next in the sequence of pictures was this one. It was also chosen because of the color match.

The final picture in this subset of four was chosen because it was the lower half of the body which connected to the upper half of the body in the previous picture.

Most of us thought that a sequenced project should lead with the strongest pictures. Vineet counseled us to save the best pictures for the last.

The pictures that did not fit were put to the side. Aesthetically arranging a collection requires “killing some of the babies.” Even excellent pictures have to go if they do not fit.

There were a couple of “holes” in the sequence of the project at the end. That means there needed to be a transition picture between two existing pictures. Those are pictures for Stephanie to take and add another day.

In addition to classroom lectures, we went out and shot for a couple of hours each morning. We were supposed to bring back the best five images after a break. Time constraints, and the need to eat, made that hard for most of us. I took almost nothing worthwhile the first day. I had some candidate images, but none actually selected the second day. Fortunately, I had a strong finish the third day. Necessity is the mother of invention.

This photo was taken in Wynwood Walls in Miami. I captured the moment that I was waiting for on the last shooting day of the workshop.

Our final selection of five pictures was shown in a slide show at the Miami Street Photography Festival. In the final five Vineet counseled us to not mix color with B&W. He wanted our images to have the same aspect and the same orientation. The first three of my final five were ho-hum, but I succeeded with the last two. I dodged the bullet of embarrassment.

Photo by Lafayette Hicks. Used with permission.

During the reviews, Vineet looked for our style. In Lafayette’s case, he produces particularly strong street B&Ws and he likes to include motion. This was my favorite of his final five. I do like interesting foregrounds! Lafayette and his wife own a wedding photography business in Jackson, MS. You can see his wedding photos at Carlyn Photography.

Some things I learned that I did not know.

You really do not have to be a stealth street photographer. If you shoot with a 28 mm focal length, manual focus at about 3 feet, aperture at f/11 to f/13, shutter speed of 1/250 + and an ISO to make the exposure work, you can walk up, put your camera to your eye and take your picture. Just keep going.

White is a compositional killer in a picture. And when I say white, I am not just talking about white objects in the picture. Any expanse of white is a potential death knell for a quality image. White will always pull your eye. I probably knew that at a subconscious level when I looked at a picture, but not at the conscious level when I was composing a picture.

You should strive to have separation in the photo. That means there should be no overlapping figures or objects in a picture. We all sort of know that there should be no poles “growing out of someone’s head,” but it is a lot more than this. It requires careful attention to your background and some anticipation of how things are going to change in the background. Street photography is not a static sport. Expect to have to move around to get the picture.

Sometimes you can cut off heads. Sometimes you should not cut off feet or hands or even fingers. I might need another workshop or two to get those rules really settled out.

You have to have a hero of the frame. The hero can be a lot of things: a person, an object, the light, or the color.

Photo by John Mendez. Used with permission.

The hero of this frame is the street artist. His arm provides a dynamic leading line up to his head. For me, the scarf on his head replaces the interest that was lost because he is not looking out. There is a second point of interest, the woman at the bottom left. She actually may be the hero of the frame. Without her, this image would not have worked nearly as well for me. John truly captured the moment in this superb composition. You can see his gallery on Instagram at @johnnybombas.

And it’s a wrap.

I am sorry I waited so long to take a street workshop, but maybe the photography gods wanted me to wait so that Vineet would lead my first one. I learned so much. I now believe, with practice, I can truly up my game in street photography. It has been awhile since I felt that way.

One of the things I determined during the workshop was that I was taking pictures a moment too soon, because I was anxious that I would miss them altogether. When I took this, Vineet asked me if I had gotten it. I sure did not think so. Surprise. If I can do it once, I can do it twice.

Exercise

Look through your recent photos. How are you doing on not having empty expanses of white in your pictures? How are you doing on separating figures in your pictures?

Dedicated to Street

I Am Now a Street Photography Workshop Veteran