Street Portraiture
April 4th, 2010
Street portraiture is all about relating to your subject. It is about story telling and about the relationships and consequently about trust. How do you build that trust in the instant you need to take the picture? How do you approach a complete stranger and persuade them to all you to take their photograph, especially if you don’t speak their language. What lens should you use? What angle should you take form? What should be in the background and why?
Many people struggle to get out from behind their viewfinder or their long lens. Shyness and fear of rejection are a part of it. Not knowing just how to handle the situation once you’re in it, is another or uncertainty about which angle or composition style to use is a third.
The street portraiture course aims to overcome these obstacles. We focus on how to approach people, how to build their trust, which lenses to use and why – shorter is better here and I we know you think that long lenses would be the obvious choice. We’ll show you why not! The result are nothing short of powerful!
This is an entirely practical one day course. We meet at a small cafe at a busy market or intersection and discuss what we are going to do. The day follows a series of exercise and examples designed to overcome the obstacles as well as to get some great images.Over lunch and at the end of the day we look at your images and discuss plans, ideas and opportunities for you to focus on after the course.
Lesson plan
- Incorporating Shorter Lenses into Your Work
- Approaching Strangers with Confidence
- Making the Best of Light and Perspective
- Seeing Photographs amid Seeming Chaos
How much does it cost?
- 1-3 people: $500 total
- 4-6 people: $125 per person
What’s included?
- All travel costs
- Lunch
- You need only bring enough local currency for refreshments and dinner at the end of the day.
What else do I need?
You will need the following
- Camera! (although we can also rent you a camera in certain circumstances)
- Lenses: wide-angle lenses, medium zooms and fixed focal length lenses are ideal.
- Charged batteries
- Formatted memory cards
- Flash/Strobe – if you especially want to but we discuss various ways to make the most of the available light
- Tripod – useful on the full-day workshops
- Sun-screen. Cairo is always sunny
- Hat/Scarf – to protect you from the sun, we spend a lot of time outside
- Spare shirt/blouse.
Booking
Booking could not be simpler. You just need to complete the booking form. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours with whether that date works, and i f not we will try and provide you with a range of dates. You just need to tell us how many of you there will be (max is 6) and what sort of standard you are.
We’ll also send you a full itinerary including a list of what to bring on the day together with a PayPal invoice for 50% of the total cost. The remaining amount is payable at the conclusion of the day, either in Egyptian Pounds or US Dollars.
