The Fuji street shooter: Photos from last week

Here are some of the photos that I have taken the last week in Stockholm. Hope you enjoy!

Candid Street Portrait #1

I was walking in the old town of Stockholm when I came across this girl, she looked my way and I pressed the shutter. Candid street portraits is one of those things I find particularly difficult because there are so many factors that should be right for it to fully work. For starters it's always nice to have a neutral and calm background that doesn't disturb the image, second timing is everything. One important thing is to stay hidden until that final moment when the subject looks your way, too really catch that candid natural look of the subject. It's hard, it takes a whole lot of luck and training. But it's fun and awarding when everything falls into place. It's a bit addicting as all kind of street photography. Street portraits are preferable done with a 40-85 mm lens, but it can of course be done with a wide angel or longer lenses (85-300 mm) but I prefer the 85 mm for working distance and the best perspective. This was a "training" shot taken with my X100 (that is a fixed 23 mm lens). I named it as CSP #1 for further inspiration for my candid street portrait series. I have 40 mm pancake lenses for both my Pentax and Canon systems and I will try these out for some more candid street portraits.

A helping hand

This photograph was also made in the old town of Stockholm. I saw them (a family?) coming down the street and that the girl (on the boys back in the window reflection) had some trouble going down the stony road. I sat down on the other site of the road and just waited for the rest of the subjects to come into the frame. When the boy with the girl on his back was reflected in the window and the rest of the family was in position I just had to press the shutter. It is not often one has this amount of time, I would say it's very rare, so rare that it almost becomes frustrating because it starts to get difficult to decide when to press the shutter because you have options. Most of the time you only have fractions of a second and after that the shot is gone, even if you have found your situation unfold for several seconds and you have figured out how to approach the situation. So if I divide my street shots into fractions of time, finding and figuring out the the situation makes up more than 90% of the time (in many cases 95-99%). The framing, focusing and finally pressing the shutter is just something that is done in a quick sequence of motion, when I lift the camera and put the viewfinder to my eye, the photograph is practically already made. This is something that I want to change and I will practice hard this year, to actually allow me to slow down and take more time for the final steps (framing, focusing and pressing the shutter).