Hey Everyone! How has your week gone? Mine pretty well. I think I'm slowly getting out of my photography slump but very slowly. This week is about street photography. Now I'm no great street photographer but I do know a little about it. There are two main mind sets when it comes to street photography and that's what we're going to discuss today. I have been fumbling around these approaches to street photography but really didn't have the words for it until I saw a video and it really clicked in. Made sense! The lightbulb came on! You're either a Hunter or a Fisher.

Hunters. Hunters are searching for subjects, hunting them down. Maybe they see an interesting looking person and follows them around. Or maybe they just wander around waiting to find the perfect light and scene maybe a bicycle laying against an ivy covered wall with the perfect shadow on it that they just happened to come up upon. Hunters are constantly moving walking and snapping away. I often use this approach when I'm doing a photo walk of a small town that I haven't been to before. I walk the streets just looking "hunting" for something to take a photo of. Some days are good ones and some aren't very productive but I'm on the move my eyes are going here and there searching for that cool shot whether it's people or still life. No doubt about it i'm going to get my steps in and see a lot of the town even though I might not get that perfect banger shot. Getting street portraits of people is defiantly a hunter type of street photography. You find an interesting person go to them and get a portrait. Most of us aren't comfortable doing this but the hunter will Man Waiting for T Boston have no problem stalking down its prey.

Fisher's. Fishers are much slower and methodical in their approach. They usually pick out a back ground scene with all of the interesting details in it and then wait for someone interesting to come and walk through. Much like a landscape photographer who finds the right composition and then waits for the perfect light or formation of clouds to come by before taking the shot. I have done a few shots like this one that I can remember was in Washington DC where I found a puddle of water by a intersection and set my camera up so I would get the reflection and waited for a bus or traffic to come by and do a longer exposure so I would get the light trails from the bus. I worked out greatly. Fishers tend to do more research on locations than hunters do so they know what backdrop they want to get and they go there and wait for the perfect subject to wander into their frame. The kind of photo with a great background and someone walks through it. Kind of like going to a pond throwing your line out and waiting for that bobber to go under water before setting the hook.

Both approaches work well for street photography. I kind of use them both. When I'm doing a photo walk of a city I'm just walking around looking for that great photo. But sometimes while I'm out on a photo walk I find a great background and just sit a while and wait for that great shot to come to me when someone walks through.  So sometimes I'm both a Hunter and a Fisher. Which are you? Until Next week Get out and Shoot!

Reading Boy Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

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