[Leica] IMGs: French Accent (Portfolio)

[Jayanand Govindaraj]

Mitch,
This is where we differ - I think that without eye contact, interactions
with strangers on the street lose a lot of their pizzaz, and any chance
whatsoever of "seeing the soul of the subject". In the same breath, I would
also add that, IMHO, seeing the face of human beings, 99.9% of the time, is
far preferable to seeing their backs!

Asking permission of the subject, taking a couple of shots and showing it
to them works very well in India - because, by and large, once you do this,
they lose their self consciousness and go back to doing what they were
doing, and forget that you are there - in effect you become a part of the
person's "inner comfort circle" at once! The western method of street
photography, to pretend, and go through an elaborate charade, to appear as
if you are not surreptitiously taking photographs, is really not required
here. One can be quite direct.

I try all the time for eye contact in the wilderness with animals/birds as
well, it adds quite an element of danger and tension, and adds some punch
to what are otherwise fairly mundane captures.

Cheers
Jayanand

On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 11:10 AM, <mitcha at mac.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the kind words, Jaya and Douglas B.
>
> Douglas - eye contact is good in some pictures, but I wouldn’t make it a
> general rule for street photography because then a lot of the pictures you
> shoot will be “street portraits.” If the aim is “documentation" or
> “depiction,” then the photographer won’t want eye contact in many of the
> pictures. On internet forums many people write how they prefer to ask the
> subjects permission before shooting, bout that often leads to the subject
> posing, which often tends to undermine both documenting and depicting.
>
> —Mitch
>
>
> > Subject: [Leica] IMGs: French Accent (Portfolio)
> > From: imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry)
> > Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2014 22:07:05 +0100
> > References: <0B24CC77-D154-48B9-8331-EA8E1A85C9C9 at mac.com> <
> CAH1UNJ3fmCUsUa5TDwAa+VBSxQOnoWDBUckdyb3edsgLzmek6g at mail.gmail.com>
> > I agree, Jayanand. You can't beat eye contact. The way to a person's
> soul is through their eyes. Well done on that one, Mitch, and there are
> others too...Sadly, too many people in photography (including myself
> betimes) think that pictures from behind work all the time. There's no
> definite route to the
> > soul through that particular hole, but the eyes always work... mostly :-)
> >
> > Douglas
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jayanand Govindaraj" <jayanand at gmail.com>
> > To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
> > Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2014 5:13 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Leica] IMGs: French Accent (Portfolio)
> >
> >
> > >I particularly like this one:
> > >
> > >
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/malland/10227777245/in/set-72157647720864997/lightbox/
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Jayanand
>
>
>
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