Photowalk: Grand Central Market

1 - Be quick, and make sure you’re in focus.

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09/14/2024 4:41 PM

I had never been to Grand Central Market in Los Angeles before, and I figured that there would be crowds of people there. In this post, I want to talk about the perspective I have going into doing street photos, so maybe my readers can understand a little bit about the kind of preparation that goes into a street photography shoot.

Firstly, I try to stick with one camera for a while. Right now, that’s my Fujifilm X100V. It has a pancake 23mm lens on it, and it allows me to capture wider angles, at the cost of needing to be much, much closer to my subject. This can be intimidating in street photography because why would you want to get in someone’s face and risk embarrassment? Maybe you feel like you’re an intruder into someone’s moment.

Street photography is uncomfortable. That’s something you have to get used to if you want to create the composition of the moment in front of you, and you must decide in a split second if you want to capture it.

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Second, I think about what exactly I’m there to shoot. As much as I love walking on the streets and shooting every building façade I find interesting, I like to have a sort of guideline for my own mind to allow me to look for something specific. What’s the saying, seek and ye shall find? That applies heavily here.

This day, I was looking particularly for people and their interaction with their activity or others. Often times when I’m out on the street I look for people, because of one idea: sonder.

Sonder is the immense realization that the strangers right next to you are living entire lives of their own, experiencing their own happiness, sadness, anger, and moments of their own slice of life.

1 - Don’t be afraid to interact. Ask if you can take someone’s portrait that you find interesting!

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But there are other ways to give yourself guidelines. Maybe you want to focus on light and shadow, or you focus on a specific color, or go about your whole photo walk based solely on sounds that interest you.

I know creativity seems like it needs all the space it needs for an idea to manifest, but I believe the opposite is true. Creativity really only comes out of our minds when we are limited. Limited by a brief, limited by a situation, limited by the gear we have.

I urge every creative out there to endlessly create, but keep trying to limit yourself in different ways and see what your mind comes up with.

Lastly, remember that moments are constantly passing you. That’s what I love about photography. Because life is constantly fleeting, these beautiful moments keep coming and going. And it’s different every second. You might not notice it now, but as you look across the pictures you’ve taken over time, you’ll see the change.