Street Photography Fishing
Nashville has many cool vehicles parading on Broadway. The only way to get a picture is pick the right side of the street and wait.
I am about as likely to go fishing, you know, with a fishing pole, as I am likely to practice meditation. My busy brain just does not like enforced quiet or inactivity. But as a new street photographer, I fell right into a method of taking pictures that is called fishing. Fishing is an apt name for the method. Here is the drill: You find a good place to fish. You wait for the “fish” to come along. Then you catch their picture.
This is a mecca for tourists in The Gulch. It is a perfect place for a new street photographer to try their hand at fishing, because, in normal times, there is an unlimited supply of fish. It is technically posed street photography. People pose for someone to take their picture, and by extension they are posing for you. You can probably see why I chose this picture out of the many that I took.
I like to say that street photography is not for sissies. You have to keep a whole lot of balls up in the air. Trying to manage the exposure and shutter speed, to compose, to look for for an interesting human or transaction, all the while moving, was a bit much for this novice photographer 10 years ago. Being the problem solver that I am, I realized that the first order of business was to stop moving. I would look for a place that was likely to make an interesting picture and then wait for the humans to come to me. That, folks, is fishing. The problem I have with enforced idleness was solved by taking a picture of every person who walked into the scene. Shutter priority was my favored setting, because getting the subject properly focused was the biggest challenge. It would only take a couple of people walking through before I knew what shutter speed was required to stop the motion. I put a histogram on my camera screen and learned to use the exposure compensation dial as a way to manage the exposure. I determined where I wanted the person to be in the frame and where they had to be when I pressed the shutter to get that. None of this was second nature to me, so being able to practice for a shot helped immeasurably.
In the beginning, walls that had street art murals on them, interesting shops or architecture were my fishing places of choice. Sometimes I just stood at a street corner. For the most part I took straight on shots. Now I try to take shots with more interesting perspectives.
I have been fishing at corners. What I want is for someone interesting to come from both sides. I wonder how long that will take? A lot of days there are abandoned electric scooters in the scene. They are real eyesores.
New street photographers are often shy. Fishing helped me move a little closer when taking pictures of people. Pretending you are trying to take the picture of the scene without people in it is a pretty effective method to be a stealth street photographer. My target subject would see me busily snapping away as they approached me. By the time they got to me, they were used to the idea that I was taking photos. If they realized they were in one of the photos, they often would apologize for getting in the way.
One Saturday I had a terrible shooting day. The next week I took up at the Boot Barn just to make sure I got something. Fishing can lead to important little victories.
I don’t fish as much as I used to. It really requires a patience that I do not have. But if I start to get tired, and it is not time to go home, I will definitely fish as a way to rest. Recently, however, my interest in fishing has been piqued. I find that I am drawn to pictures taken from a really low point of view. Now, you can accomplish this by just squatting a little when you take the picture, but that is definitely not for me. You can also take a seat on the ground. Once I am down, that is a fishing activity for me. It is not going to be easy to get back up. To that end, six days a week, three times a day, with my camera around my neck, I sit down on the floor and then get up. I am just about ready for prime time on the streets.
My new Facebook friend, Julia Giannopoulis, has been the one who inspired me. Just look at this gorgeous picture that she took in NYC.
Photo by Julia Giannopoulos. Used with permission. You can see Julia’s work on her Facebook gallery at Julia Giannopoulos and her Instagram gallery at @jay_shoots_streets_.
On dry days she will sit down on the ground and take pictures for about 1/2 an hour. She told me sometimes people ask her what she is doing, but other times they do not notice her and even run into her. The picture above was taken on a wet, snowy day. On wet days she will crouch with an umbrella and take pictures for 15 minutes, all the while getting splashed. I am thinking that I will be doing no crouching.
Fishing is a good place to start for a new street photographer. But it is also can be used to get incredibly creative images. It is a nice change up from hunting.