Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Steve LeHuray wrote: >>>>something that is consistent in my photos is LACK of eye contact. I do > not know if that is good or bad because I have always tried to avoid photos > with people looking into camera, but maybe I will do some with eye contact > and see how it works out.<<<< > > Hi Steve, > > Your wk 38 shot would've lost it's appeal if these guys were looking at you > unless you were doing some kind of portrait thing with them. And if only one > of them was looking at you the whole meaning of candidacy would be lost. And > I bet you'd never have printed it. > > Eye contact is fine if there's a reason for eye contact, otherwise it > appears as though the subject looking at you has just discovered you taking > their picture and looking at you for no apparent reason. > > It works like this, well OK for me, eye contact for a reason, otherwise > you're doing a street candid of life as it goes on and you're an invisible > element of that and you don't want people aware of you because.... you are > invisible! Right? > > Another good one Steve! > ted > > Ted Grant Photography Limited Thanks for weighing in Ted, I have been thinking about this all afternoon. What you say is pretty much how I feel about eye contact for my street photography. To me the camera is a voyeur and records all the stuff going on around me. After several years of doing street photography it seems I have settled in on the Cartier-Bresson/Robert Doisneau style of observing life as it is. I realize that in real life making eye contact with the people you interact with is very important, but, I am not interacting with the people I photograph. The extent of my interaction is recording some of the daily things that normal people are doing with their normal lives. It is possible that in the distant future some people may look at my photos and think, "oh thats how things looked back then." And in case anybody wants to jump on this, I do not take photos of homeless, disabled, excessively obese or pictures of people in an embarrassing situation. sl - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html