Finding Your Photography Niche | B&H Event Space

[Music] hello everybody and hello everyone on the computer my talk is about developing your own photographic style my name's and shallow photographer known I guess for street photography but I don't really consider myself a street photographer just a photographer so gives me access to lots of different styles but the street photography or whatever you want to call this stuff that I'm doing is is what I'm going to talk about today so this is my third talk here at B&H so thank you to being a jazz well for having me so who in the room has seen my pictures before okay and hopefully online go click on my website or Instagram you can have a look who will save you some yeah I've got some explaining to do but I shoot in a very kind of niche way I suppose I photograph in black and white or photograph people often in urban environments and that's about it I don't you won't really see me shooting food photography or color portraits much I kind of shoot in this way and that's it and I want to explain hopefully over the course of this talk how I got to this point shooting in this style why are shooting the style and why don't you other things and why I think that's really important too if you really want to get really good at photography or be able to have your own style why it's important to drill the same kind of practice over and over and over again because it's very tempting these days to feel like you should you know dabble in loads of different things it's quite tough to get the balance between experimentation and losing your way in terms of having a style so this is something that I thought about quite a lot these pictures are part of my exhibition that's um at the like a store in Soho New York until January 3rd so if you want to see these non pixelated and in real life which is better then on a phone I yeah be great to go see them so a little bit of background about me used to be a musician since young age I started playing music and I eventually went to university to study music and I became a songwriter or composer and I was doing stuff for television and fulfill and I was so terrified about not not earning money in the industry I really wanted to be a musician that was my thing that was who I was like I'm gonna do this I want to get by by doing music but with that comes fear and comes you know the my father who was you're gonna be poor you're gonna be on the street kind of thing the whole time dual or join the family business was the kind of vibe I was getting for most of my teenage years so I was I'm gonna prove him wrong I'm gonna do whatever it takes to do this music thing and so I got into commercial songwriting which initially was exciting the first time I heard one of my pieces of music on the television it was for an insurance advert are very very excited but five years later of doing that not so much and I kind of got sucked into this thing where I was writing music for whoever and whatever and I'd kind of put myself out there as I'll do whatever for you know musically and so I ended up with no style at all and the people the agency I was with didn't really you know they couldn't place me as like the guitar guy or the guy who writes the dance music or the classical stuff and there were some people doing that and they were getting kind of jabs at me anyway so eventually photography came along and I had identified my frustration with music and how I had gone down this route and you know and the mistakes had made so I thought at least now got a hobby that I really really enjoy that you know fulfills me creatively so I decided to shoot only how I wanted to shoot which was in black and white I get asked why do you shoot in black and white I don't really know why it drew me more than other things but it did I just enjoyed the work of people like carting breasts on and server Co cigar dough and all these people who by the way don't really shoot in color do they they they have really dedicated to the way they shoot and for some reason that switch me on that those kinds of pictures so I went out and began my mission which was to go out and shoot some stuff on the street with the intention of just doing what I wanted which is what I should have been doing music to be honest so wise man once told me what a few years ago the biggest brand he's a fashion photographer so the biggest brands in the world want to work with artists not with commercial photographers hmm sounds really simple but it makes a lot of sense you know they they want someone who you know not just brands but you know whatever editorial stuff is or they want a photographer he's got a clear vision and it's like okay we're gonna we can go to you for this because this is what you'd live and breathe kind of thing rather than you know I'm look up my portrait portfolio my food portfolio my Street portfolio and my wedding portrait you know that just makes you look like you have no idea what you're doing and you're just trying loads of things and it's impossible to be brilliant all those things and there's nothing wrong with just specializing in food photography you know I know a guy called David Loftus who's does Jamie Oliver's books and a lot of the biggest restaurants in the world his stuff ridiculously cool and it's just food you should check out his work they are worth speaking to him I had a lot in common with him you know he just does you know that thing the food from above shot pretty sure he pioneered that a way back and everyone does it but he was doing that well ages ago all these pictures like that and then released the book and if I went mad for it was like oh this is really clever hmm so that worked for him and he still does that which is a good example I think of someone who has found their thing and just owns that so off I went shooting this stuff and my pictures by the way didn't look like this when I began and that's another thing I'd like to talk about a little bit um I was always shooting in black and white but it was very low contrast stuff mainly because I didn't know how to edit I didn't really understand like how to use light properly or consistently I kinda stood the difference between hard light soft light but I didn't really know how to manipulate that will kind of thing and how to really see subtle light situations and all that kind of stuff that I'm now spend most of my life to but I had my goal of trying to achieve pictures that were you know that were nice to look at and I was really inspired by these books from the photographer's I told you before and I kept comparing my work to theirs and I was like mine doesn't look like that there's no contrast in it I suppose you know they looked flat and listened and slowly bit by bit by bit by bit well I say slowly I've been photographer for five years which some people say is not that much time but I've packed a lot into that five years and I shot a lot and it was like I had the right environment around me to allow myself to actually become a photographer ie I was a freelancer already which meant I could pick and choose the hours so I actually Naumann I deliberately chose to cut down my music hours and my earnings in order to shoot street photography which again my family thought was ridiculous but it was a decision I could make and I didn't have children I didn't have not married or anything so you know I had the right conditions to actually go out and starts doing this regularly and doing it regularly is the important thing you know like half an hour a day is better than two hours once a week it's you know keeping the I always working and then it's got to the point now where I can't turn it off which is good and bad but within the first year I decided to do a series on the London Underground called life on the Underground and for those of you who haven't got a photos you haven't worked on a photo series before it's a very important thing to try and do especially for a street photographer so why am I saying that so when you shoot on the street it's a very random seemingly random environment right especially if you travel around and you're doing it so but my pictures and other photographers look kind of cohesive together even though they're taken all over the world and in different types of year and all that kind of thing so it's like how does this happen how can you get a style like that and I think oh this guy chased me down the street after I took it he woke up it's like if you're not shooting a photo series or if you don't have a direction for your work an idea of what you want to do and why you're doing it you're just taking random pictures and hoping that they gel together right and I've said this before it's the equivalent of an author trying to write a book by coming up with really clever sentences one by one and stitching them together and it doesn't actually make any sense so you know like she looked into his eyes and remembered the way they were before sentence what do you think oh that's a lovely sentence I'm going to enjoy this book sentence number two the meteorite crashed in to the sea and a huge tidal wave engulfed the earth oh okay that's a nice sentence but it doesn't make any sense to the first one anyway most people's Instagram pages and websites look like that to me where it's like okay I see what you did there that's pretty cool but you know this next picture might as well be a whole nother photographer so it doesn't make any sense and it's really jarring and it's the thing I think people switch onto you the most is when they see a picture they like and then they go and research the person who made it and then they see more stuff like that than they like then they actually get invested in it and I are good you know if someone sees that picture of mine or that one or or that one and then the next thing they see is me with a you know my cat on my sofa or or I don't have a cat or you know a picture of you know a girl with really blue eyes you know they're gonna be like whatever and carry on scrolling endlessly through Instagram or whatever social media app you choose so I think it's important to have a direction so that you can actually repeat stuff and have something more to say than you know I'm just taking pictures of people on the street they don't know why or I like shooting with shadows you know only photographers enjoy talking about shadows most people don't you know and we forget that it's quite you know try submit I've heard I've seen people submitting bodies of work to an editor at magazine being like this is my series on silhouettes you know okay you know doesn't make any sense to non photographer you know like what's so great about silhouettes oh they're great you should try them you know so but if you shoot a series called New York by night and you use loads of silhouettes as part of it and you show the city in a different way you don't have to talk about the silhouettes people will see it and you should use those things as stylistic tools to make stuff look good you're presenting to people like this and you know that's the important distinction to make is not getting too lost in the most people think that the term shooting for other photographers yeah or getting too bogged down with with the technical stuff and the camera stuff that's to do with like the lenses in the camera side of it but it's not also the techniques that photographers use that can become so that people obsess about a little bit too much and then make their photography about that and then you end up with something that only photographers are going to like or care about and you know I guarantee you someone like Cartier Bresson didn't go out with the intention of shooting loads of shadows you know he went out to execute a vision of his that he had and those things happen to go along the way does this make sense yeah so yeah so developing your style is the most important thing is having an idea of what your style is first of all or having the kind of guts to pick one and go I'm going to do this for six months and go and running with that if you don't do that and you know good luck shoot everything you know I mean if you think of Matisse you have an idea of what I'm a tea slips I write or a Picasso or what did I do you think of Gordon Ramsay you know what he does you know he's not an analyst he's not a semi pro golfer as well no either he's a chef you know these people all do their things and that is what they do and that's it and it's important to you know it sounds really obvious but I think when it's applied to something like this like photography it just gets lost because it's it's so much you can you can do so I like to limit myself as much as possible and I shoot in this aesthetic the the tools I use to shoot with are also hugely important people say you know yeah some hipsters who say stuff like oh you camera doesn't matter man you know and I say that to an f1 driver that their car doesn't matter so it does it helps to be a good driver but you know if you have a bad car you're not going to win and I think is if you get the nice synergy of good camera what don't the right camera for you and the right lens choice and the right vision BAM it can be really good and for me when I discovered the 24 millimeter perspective which by the way most of this is shot with something just when I don't know why I just went ah that really fits what I how I'm trying to see and I was shooting with a 50 in a 35 mil a lot and then getting that 24 I did it wide just worked for me some people freak out when they try it at 24 there gar this is way too wide but do you know Don McCullen the war photographer who journalist credible guy photographer he shoots most of his work with a 135 you know which would seem nuts to me but the results speak from self so talking about the limitation thing I shoot with the camera that it's a like a monochrome type 246 very catchy name and it shoots only in black and white this digital camera shoots in black and white and I use three or four M lenses but the majority of the time I'm using one the 24 mil 1.4 zoom Alexis ferric or another catcher and I find that that pairing for me I'm kind of like done it was a relief to find that this body this lens oh I'm happy now I can stop worrying about that and get off all the forums and just could shoot a bit more so why do I shoot with the camera that you know most cameras can shoot in black in color and then you you know what all cameras basically shoot in color digital ones and then you can convert into black and white so what's the benefit of shooting a camera that is you know in just black and white natively and it doesn't give you the option of color and there are loads of technical reasons why it's good like sharpness and low-light performance and all these things that I won't really go into because it's quite tiring but the main reason why it's great is because when you work with a tool that can't shoot in color you you just you don't have the choice so you stop prioritizing it you can't you stopped seeing it you know and I even with a film camera you can put color film in if you wanted you could you know it's in the back of my mind like maybe I should go try that portrait stuff that everyone goes on about but with this I felt it was quite liberating to have a tool that just didn't give me that option and never would be able to so if I'm out with that I have to shoot it black and white that's it and for me that was a really nice thing and then walking around with just one lens 24 on a camera that that's like that great it makes a load of decisions for you already it's like I'm going to be shooting white an angle and I'm going to be shooting black and white those are two great things that can be ticked off and then I could just focus more on what I'm doing and less on what I'm going to do and you know having options so I'm a big fan of prime lenses and not using zooms because I feel like zeros are sometimes I wish I had a zoom goose I've missed shots was try and change lenses but it's more the discipline I think it takes a lot of discipline to shoot a zoom lens and walk them into a scene and be like this needs 35 millimeters not going to be here you know but you know Steve McCurry uses a zoomed some of my friends who are great photographers they they're using very well I just personally like using price and then zooming with my legs so I've covered quite a lot of stuff just then ah there we go there's one from a recent trip so exploring contrast has become a thing of mine that I've really enjoyed doing getting going further and further down the rabbit hole of weirdness one of my things is that I like to I like to present the world in a way that we don't necessarily see it every day you know though some photographers do the kind of this is life as we see it and they do it quite well but I like to put the viewer in a space to where they couldn't see it like that you know prospective wise or subject wise or angle wise or likewise you know because cameras as good as these sensors are there no in areas developed as our eyes in terms of dynamic range so you know a scent you know our eyes could never see something like that if you if you were seeing a scene like this you'd have to go to the optician but a camera you know if you meter off that light up top or off the sunlight you know can't the senses can't do it they and I've exploited that to create this thing so so my style I suppose is a little bit of that my kind of abstraction but also trying to minimalize the kind of clutter and busyness of a city and looking for scenes that are I don't know just I I try and make compositions that are easy to unto to understand as in when you look at it you get what I've done you don't have to read a huge caption I hate that it's kind of happening to photography at the moment and it's not some you know you a guy with a plant pot in a room and an anorak on and then you read and it's like this is about sustainability and how would his ark you know I'd rather see a really beautiful picture of something going on like in a rainforest I don't know something to tell me that story rather than some rubbish picture that doesn't need to exist they say a photo but a photograph can well what's this here a photo tells a thousand words but now people are putting a thousand words under their photos and it's absolutely awful so you know I think it's important to not lean on words when it comes to visual art well those important be able to talk about what you're doing but don't presume that someone is going to bother reading all your stuff because they won't best piece of advice I've ever had is no one cares about your photos someone taught me that because I always keep that in your head don't take it too seriously no one really cares as much as you they never will mmm brutal but apt seriously it's a good piece of advice even people forget there's another pigeon shop so obviously I it took me time to be able to this is an amalgamation of many techniques and skills that I've picked up over time I didn't just see the pigeon and just take it if it was I've been trying to do pigeon shots for like a year beforehand kind of thing and developed this weird thing and that's how weird well I heard pigeons I can actually I follow them around and I get them to where I want them and so this pigeon was down the street and I won a bit there and I followed it I wish to have the street I got it there and I moved back and I stamped and I took the picture that's how that happened and this was intended the reflection because I saw it landing and I saw the reflection and I do reflections all the time but this was the bit where I saw it on my screen and did a little jig I was very happy that picture is for me what kind of typifies street photography because like I could wait in the oculus and take this again probably and that and that that's the MetLife building near Grand Central what not that you can tell you know I could take that all day long that one as well you know but this even if I had a very well trained pigeon I don't think I could I don't think I could do that again so these are the shots I kind of I love and you know you can never shoot these at will they just happen so every soft and it's nice to have it and it required so many things like do you see the light is ended here right so it was that thing in New York where the light bounces off the buildings and you get like a spotlight on the streaks its reflected off like an open window or something so I had this weird spotlight thing and the rest of the street was just in the shadow and yes it was like a nice little stage for my mr. pigeon and I took this in 2018 that's my favorite picture I did in 2018 and yeah Fuko what's your favorite picture I was like oh it's one of a pigeon and they think are so sad poor man poor poor man if anything she's a professional but you know so this required timing foresight you know and and that's an important thing so like if you wanna know about how I shoot I like for this scene I see it first and then I wait for my subject to enter and the fishermen not the hunter approach so I drop my net and I wait for the big fish rather than walking around shooting randomly like I'm in a Western you know there that you know people think of street photography and they think in like you know like breasts on and his trench coat and he's just holler up and really cool if cigarette probably and it's not like that it's an it's mainly sitting or crouching or even worse sitting like on the floor where everyone thinks you're mad and waiting for something I find that that has resulted in you know took me like 10 minutes to creep up to this guy slowly me he was asleep but it's about identifying the scene and then executing I'm pretty sure they're you know very few of my pictures have happened spontaneously and all good or like good enough for me to want to show them or publish them even you know but I still do I walk down the street and try and fetch coffee occasionally you get one but mostly it's it's thought and that's the point of all this is kind of thinking about what you're doing a lot I think I kind of became a photographer not by shooting but by sitting there thinking a lot and looking at my work and thinking you know why am I doing this why don't you know or like looking at a picture in the book I'm going why do I like you know I love this picture why do I like it and it's not okay if you break down the technique it's okay I like the fact that it's a weird perspective or like from the the angle of the light or like you know the juxtaposition between these two elements there's always a reason why why you're drawn to something whatever it is in life and I've kind of deciphered what it was I liked and then started implementing that with the themes that I wanted to shoot that make sense so this is the Apple Store the oculus super wide angle lenses 16 mil trial ma there's another one where I waited for a long time that was quite spontaneous when I saw her coming and then jumped on the floor she must have been terrified okay so this is the one this is the one sitting there like I mean literally sitting on the street it's quite there's got to be done sometimes someone chucked me a dollar I mean it yeah and then look to look back at me for the appreciative nod you know that they won and I was sitting there with a little you know fifty thousand dollar camera must have been weird thing Q knew what it was he was like this is weird so yeah you can see like I'm always trying to shoot from weird angles and perspectives that's what I like stare you know do you know where this is have you been to the oculus I mean the oculus is kind of a photographer's playground there's so many things going on in there and like if there are loads of people sometimes you can make a thing out of that you know so I've used the reflection to kind of double how many people there were so I can't I love just trying to decipher a scene and try and apply my own style to that so you know I'll sit in a it's like you I don't know what the analogy is but I it's it's about instead of just shooting shooting shooting shooting it's about just observing and then kind of thinking about it and then taking one or two pictures that are actually good rather than and like the the point where the photos of success is generally when you come up with it think of the you know with the clever angle or the thing that someone else might not have seen and because they're not thinking hard enough is that kind of thing and it's quite exciting when you when you find it and that was taken yesterday and that was taken yesterday so you can see right now there are links between this picture and this picture and this picture and this picture it's like geometric human-based quite high contrast you know a recognizable scene but not one that but photographed in a way that people think it's what is maybe a slightly different look on how you'd look at a train driver or a train like that and that's it it's pretty simple the idea is pretty simple but it's just about going out there every day and doing it and repeating that's the tricky bit yeah somewhere in Germany okay so so all of those were part of the New York series that these are around the words this is in Hanoi that's a cool place I'm so jet-lagged oh that's another thing you can't take photos if you're a super jet-lagged I found that out and I've just done this monster fort where I was going around like Asia South America and in Asia and then North America and Europe and by the time I got here I was just producing the worst pictures oh I see oh I need to sleep for two days you say yeah that was Carter hennya in Colombia that was a couple of weeks ago three weeks ago I to plant some trees or something I need to offset all this stuff I'm serious don't get someone said that to me what's on Instagram there well that's great all this traveling are doing we thought about the environment you got can't think of everything so it's the same idea is the one in the oculus really you know so I'm applying so I like to limit myself in all these ways and look for certain elements and then I let my environment dictate the variety in the work rather than trying to do loads of crazy new things all the time I I just shoot in the same way and then you know this is the same kind of technique as that shot with the window in New York the reflect it's just different place so the picture is going to look different though make sense similar shots very similar almost the same composition as well subject so this is reusing that was a cool tattoo tatami thank you using that as you know leading lines and the table and this is the bench this is it in Korea and this was an accident getting the cup in I didn't realize that's my favorite bit the pitcher the way the straw kind of follows the line of these structures alone little things like that but yeah that was luck this is near a pipeline famous wave in Hawaii on the North Shore loads of people died there surfing it's like mostly this is the offseason that the waves they get to like 30 feet and it's ridiculous if you haven't been quite cool thing to see but Hawaii was like a nightmare for me I mean it's like green and blue and sunsets and tropical drinks and beaches and that's it so it was a real struggle for me and I love that you know here I'm like a fish in water and you know New York so it's great just sit on one subway platform for half an hour and probably get a picture I like whereas in Hawaii I was really stressing out but I managed to take I like this one I like this one and but god it was hard fought for so again geometric people quite closely punched in on the subject so I became very interested in and how you could guide the viewers eye to a subject without their face being filling the frame you know because 50 mils are easy to it's easy to take a portrait of someone and it'd be quite obvious what you're doing but if their head is like two percent of the frame or the eyes you know making it clear that it's that that is it's taking time to kind of go wider and wider and wider and still be able to focus the eye on the subject and all that here's a little tip for developing your own series and it's something that I did quite a lot of and is if you have a hundred pictures a month that you've taken or you've edited you you take you go to in London it's called snappy snaps there's a photography shop where you can make prints for hundred for $20 like little postcard size six by fours whatever and then you put a hundred a month in a shoebox and then at the end of the year you have 1200 pictures in this box right and then you get them out and you put them all out everywhere in your house to the lament of your partner perhaps and the reason this is important is because you can start to look at your pictures as a like at more than one at a time say in in a book you can only see two or three pictures in on a page and off you know on a computer you have to like cycle through them like we're doing here when you when you look at all your pictures like that and you just leave them there for like a week you you start to see trends in pictures that maybe were taken months apart that that you can put them together and you can start making sets of images so my series metropolis which is kind of this stuff loneliness in the modern world pretty easy subject to shoot they used to he spewed quite an obvious choice that was born out of doing this so I had these negative space pictures like this right so at the end of the frames about here home and I had these pictures where you know 50% or 60% of the image was black and I hadn't taken them consciously like that but I put them together and out of all those pictures that were there in in the living room I suddenly I had these five together that looked like they belong together on a wall and I thought I pushed all yarns aside and I was like right I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna try and make five more of these and then five more of these and five more of these and then all of a sudden you have an exhibition it was kind of thing but it's true and and that is how the series happened and now you know I didn't just start doing this kind of thing you know it's like an evolutionary thing like man climbing out of the primordial ooze I started off with like these pretty average shots and then honed it and honed it and and then because I was shooting exactly what I wanted to do and I was being super selective and then going like doubling down on being niche more and more and more all of a sudden you end up doing something that people aren't really doing because you know I mean someone can people copy this stuff quite a lot now I see online which is equal parts annoying and flattering but it's kind of missing the point is saying you know you're never gonna learning a guitar solo by Jimmy Page doesn't kind of you can't write one necessarily like that you know you have to go through the process of doing that to understand if you learn the techniques okay he's done this he's done this but you know even if you understand it on that level yeast is still hard to replicate like that and then you just think so if you go through the effort of copying someone that intensely why not just do something of your own you know it's the same kind of effort and emulating is an important thing like where everyone does it I started doing that and but there's got to be a point where you start to think for yourself and stop just trying to copy and stop yeah leaning on that and having your own ideas and I'm not saying that all of my pictures are like super original but some of them are my pictures and I've got a small handful you know someone said rather morbidly to me that's an obituaries shot you know she passed away they put it this is what this purpose artist did he was like they'd use that cut the picture to sum up this was you and it's quiet it was a weird thing to think about but you know it's weird when you think of like cartier-bresson all the life he had of the places he went balls down to like ten images in our mind his and it's that kind of thing but they are his you know he wasn't copying so these are portraits but see how if you have a target like that if you have a direction to actually go in it becomes a lot easier to ascertain whether you've got a good shot or whether you haven't got a good shot whereas if you're kind of direction this is very hard to say I've achieved my goal because if there's no gold and it's very hard to to know what the hell's going on does this make sense I don't know yeah I'm getting some blank looks but so to summarize the way I've developed the style is a lot of reflection on what I've already shot not really listening to anyone's advice just doing what I want and wax on wax off mr. miyagi start just shooting shooting shooting and then thinking thinking thinking and then you know so I mean it sounds obvious but it's something that's quite easily lost in street photography in particular you know food photographer their direction is pretty obvious it's going to be food and portrait photographers you know portraits street photography massively open to interpretation so much you can do that it can become but there's always more and more you know it's always within each genre you can always refine it and become more specialized and and I found just from it not that anyone here wants to be a I don't know what if we've got working photographers here or not but and whether you want to have a job as a photographer or whether you want to just improve your photography or whether you want to have an exhibition or whatever the thought process is the same and I accidentally transitioned into a career in photography by getting discovered for having a series and that's that's how it started for me I was just doing my life on the underground series and an editor at time out found it on Flickr and emailed me well no DM don't message me on Flickr certainly website and I had no Instagram at that point and he just said really liked your pictures on the underground we'd like to do an interview with you and I've been shooting for like eight months and he didn't know that and I certainly wasn't gonna tell him that and it's one of the questions is you know how long you've been working on this series no I was like enough I've been working on it enough he was oh okay like yes next question please and and and it kind of domino effect in a little bit so then after that feature went out I got a call from a newspaper in national in in London he who said we like we just seen your thing on the underground we've got an assignment we want a photographer for on the underground will you come in and do it so I was like at mine you know in a studio at the time recording it's like yeah sure I'll be there well god and then I had to do this assignment and it was a time restricted assignment there's also the most devilish because it's like you've got to do it although you look like a massive idiot so I had to provide this thing in like three days and it was portraits of people on the underground listening to music and then the caption of the picture being the song that they were listening to so it's quite funny like you know really grumpy looking man low and listening to Katy Perry firework and and and and so it was like this and and they were like you have to get twenty images on the underground now would you feel comfortable talking to someone on the subway just randomly striking up a conversation probably not and I would how would you feel if they had headphones in probably even less likely because that's like a sign of like leave me alone please I'm enjoying my whatever music and so I had to just be like excuse me excuse me and I got told rude words that I shall not repeat now many rude words on underground but I asked about 200 people I got 15 pictures that were good enough anyway and then that went out and then that did really well people find it really funny and then I got another call from them and then some architecture firm when I always really liked or black my pictures can you come and shoot I'll put a project for us and I'm like yeah I'll do that and then bit by bit by bit by bit by bit things started to come together and then just started doing a lot of news pieces and my work was going out to loads of people I didn't have a direction then I was shooting black and white for the majority of it and then next thing that happened was someone persuading me to join Instagram then did that and then with a couple of friends we founded something called the street photography International which has done really well and that was a good thing and got approached by agencies and tourism boards and then all of a sudden it was like Mel a photographer now so I stopped doing music CC it's a very gradual like I know two steps forward one step back and I think and then yeah that was it it was funny my first one of my first proper assignments was at London Fashion Week and I was there with a very famous fashion photographer I think of David Bailey who's like he's serious and he I didn't talk to him I saw him and I was the other fatah and I was like no way this is a joke I've been taking pictures for a year how did this happen but I was I and I'd accidentally I was using the photographer lingo already you know I've got this series I'm doing you know on the underground it's really deep and people go yeah you know but fortunately I went into doing a series immediately because of my background in music and writing albums and stuff so you don't write a song without a point you know that doesn't have a point you you know so why would you take photos at that point and I didn't realize that at the time but it just made sense to me and luckily it was a good thing to do so you know people talk about storytelling in photography but they focused a lot on the technique and then they try and focus on the storytelling but I think it should be done as much as possible together and actually there's only a certain amount of camera technique you can learn but the you know the other side of it you can go on forever cameras are pretty easy to use despite most Patrol what a lot of photographers like to massively overinflate the difficulty of taking pictures but you know I've said this workshops and before like if you put a five-year-old kid in front of a violin you know they would never be able to make a achieve the melody but if you put a fiver on in front of a camera and said he may do this and you press this button they've been taking pictures really quick so like the tool itself isn't that hard but yet there are no child prodigy photographers you know that I've heard of because it requires a depth of knowledge and understanding to actually take a meaningful picture taking a sharp picture anyone can do but taking a picture or taking a series of pictures that are interlinked that's difficult so I'd recommend just basically thinking about it as much as possible and doing that thing with the mini prints and the shoebox and seeing if you've got a series already and then you and then it's I don't maybe if this sounds like really hard work and like you know bumming you out the idea of doing this then you know fair enough just do whatever it is that keeps you enjoying it but for me I enjoyed photography more than ever before when I started to get on a track of my own and was producing stuff that I felt personally attached to you know in a way of looking at the pictures of some of the photographers that I got into it you know and being like oh you know that kind of thing so anyway guess it's time for Q&A they don't do a Q&A it's just gonna be one person asking the question you okay it's working okay before all thank you for sharing I really enjoyed looking at your work right can you talk a little bit about your metering style and I need using manual focused your focusing style yeah used on focus yeah yeah yeah sure you spot metering in my zone focus I mean I don't know if I can elaborate more on that but it's often exposing for the highlights so like this shot looking for scenes that have very high naturally-occurring contrast so ie metering off that light all of you guys I wouldn't be able to see you guys so it's that kind of thing but place someone in the you know have someone walk through in the right point and you'd get a cool shot so metering is a very important part but yes spot metering is what I use the others are all just weird do things I don't like and will do the question about the focusing so zone focusing his own focusing is a thing that is kind of necessary on what is it's only really possible on manual lenses so they've got this depth of field indicator so the lens is telling you how what distance the lens is focusing in and then depending on the aperture you're on it can tell you the depth the field like how deep the plane to focus is and they use it all the time or autofocus for me is is quite irritating I don't like as in is most sometimes it would just be perfect like for this shot this was a shot of a mannequin it's not a real person it's a mannequin and some people go oh that's cheating it's not really he could could have been a person I saw it it's cool I think and it's quite funny actually I hope the person never watches this but this lady in Los Angeles bought a printer that big one and she yeah she said you know we organized it was like six feet by four feet you know like a door and and then she sent me this email and she said oh here it is up in my house oh my god I love it and then it said please tell me the story behind this mysterious man now if I oh no oh no so I said similar to the time out interview I start my room you know politician my way out of it they said isn't it isn't the mystery more important than knowing this story also also something ridiculous and like that and she went you're absolutely right I'm sorry for asking it would have ruined it I've been lolly as a mannequin on Piccadilly Circus in London Oh so yeah metering allowed that to look like that if you see so it was taken at night so the only light that was on was the spotlight above and if that had been any a hat that wasn't white you know what have worked you see I mean any other questions I thank you again former beforehand you said that you like literally curate your photos before you even take them so like what I'm trying to understand is are you going out to the street and you have except for a vision you have like not a spot you're looking for but some specific worker or a shot you are looking to get before you even took it yes so it would be like on your feet in a certain way I didn't I okay so no I I didn't go out on this day going oh I want to make a replica of the ladies are obscene at the end of the film kind of think I just so happened to stumble across it and France won the World Cup recently and so the French are celebrating I didn't plan for that you know it's not that deep you know I'm not walking around looking for a lady in black sunglasses it's not like that kind of thing I'm it's more there are lots of things that I don't shoot and I know I won't look for so I keep myself yeah it's tough to be not blinkered but open to seeing things I'm just looking around for scenes that would work for me so how many shots are you taking let's say you go out on a session and at 30 minutes an hour out like how many shots you looking to take because sometimes like at the beginning for me was like I took a couple of hundreds and now I can like walk around for three hours and maybe take 20 yeah I'm kind of more like that but it all depends it's like to capture this I had to take quite a lot of pictures it wasn't just like actually it wasn't that many was like 10 this one was a one-off just a one shot this was a couple of shots that house party I mean I react to I get triggered by things often it's light so I like backlight I like some nice natural occurring naturally occurring geometry I always say there is four things you say it's three thing and now it's four things that make a great picture a good subject good environment good light and good perspective is the one I realized it's also super important so it's really rare to have all four of those things aligned in front of you but when they do I'll take the picture if I can't that makes sense Oh oh my goodness the diamond dog was so her yeah that thing maybe bit me nasty little rat dog it was really sweet until the last moment and then it I got it side photograph dogs a lot and I think I've done a whole project on dogs Elliott Erwitt did one and I was thought so brilliant I thought I'd like to try and continue in that vein ish but yeah this one was I almost took my hand they tried it's called blue Bluebell Bluebell very sweet any other questions thank you very much again kind of spoken mentioned the thought process and kind of observing and sitting for periods of time mmm how do you think about or how do you balance maybe per say your participation in life versus your observation and thinking about the scenes that you're offering of life yeah I'm an observer there's there there's the whole thing I've had it before where someone said to me like put down the camera and just like enjoy it but I I really enjoy it just by studying stuff I thought I get a great pleasure out of it that's that's the thing I'm very lucky because I really love it and if I wasn't doing this as my job but I would be wishing I was doing this as my job so it's it's good so I don't see this as a chore you know like participation in life I don't know as a street as a photographer you have to engage with it you know you have to go where the pictures are you can't just sit there and wait for something to come to you so it's a mixture of both you have to be able to like I did the skydiving thing I just photograph skydivers forming our planes once with with that and that was really crazy but it was the kind of thing that I wouldn't have ever done skydiving was it not for photography so sometimes it leads you to leads me to do things yeah I wouldn't do and also it gives you an excuse to do things that I would never ever do either end up just doing weird weird stuff you know that you just think why am i doing this why am I here like I went to North Korea semester what am i any other questions the answer is cool and these amazing pictures thank you obviously everybody you go out everyday every night and come back with one one of this level of photograph how long would it take you to get this this one yeah oh so subjective can you expect in in one night when you go out you're gonna get one of this level where it's not a couple nights and and to be honest I you have to live with a picture for a while before you know if it's good or not really good or you know I'm always hopeful that I take a good shot but it's weird like the way that people used to shoot with film you know you take the picture and you wouldn't see it and you you wouldn't see it for maybe a week or maybe you in a month or maybe six months because you haven't devoted your film whereas with this it's like taking a bound processor BAM post it which is good and it's it's so nice yeah I actually like that way of working it's been good for me and it's like motive you know motivates me to go out and get new stuff but it's not always a good idea and you have to have a very good sense of your own style to be able to do that and not just keep putting out loads of average stuff so yeah the curation side being pretty brutal on yourself is is important I don't know I mean I I take a lot of pictures that aren't as good as that I haven't taken a picture as good as this you know in a while a couple of weeks maybe well tonight actually that's not sure I took the train driver I'd like to Train to everyone the change everyone so as good as that yeah so I don't know if but some people don't like that picture some people would prefer that maybe as it's a very personal taste thing you know we might go that way you know but you know some people hate pizza I can't even imagine the world like that but some people hate it and so you know I don't know it's I mean who was it Ansel Adams said is if you take 12 relevant pictures in a year you've done well 12 and I go for one a month that's why my target is to make one that is like I kept in a book cuz you know like that one that one I think I could put in a book that one as well and this one and that one and that one maybe that one stop well he's alright but but you know this is I don't know it's a hard thing to answer really realist but I just take pictures I try and take the best pictures I can and often it's not the environment that is causing me to not get pictures it's my own head you know I think being clear-headed and not distracted and you know by life stuff is a big important thing and to try and focus on the photography it's very hard to let photography take you know I know a lot of people feel that photography takes them away from feeling stressed which is great it's amazing but it's even better if you are not stressed beforehand and you go out and you can think rather than letting the photographer process of just being outside and walking around relax you you know so I mean I don't without risk of sounding massively pretentious but you know you have to let yourself be totally blank and just see what is there and not what you want to be there kind of thing and then just really study it and then take pictures of a hard and I sound so so stupid just say that but but yeah just to you know literate yeah all the technique stuff has to have already been that be there and you have to just let that work on autopilot and just study what's going on in front of you as closely as possible if you're worrying about your friends health or your job or your partner or you need to go too low or you're really hungry all these things can can be awfully distracting for photography I you know I have to have everything just right before I can go out and shoot and then when I can I'm in a good frame of mind I'll do it and by the way I will shoot for like an hour and a half a day maybe but like properly you know if you if you're doing street photography properly or shooting a portraits properly it's exhausting it's mentally like exhausting and to do it for eight hours good level of concentration or high intensity is is unrealistic but sometimes I get the best pictures having said that just walking around with a friend for a day and not thinking too hard about it but most of the time I get them on my own in some weird place in the world and where I've just gotten over my jet lag and I can focus so this picture took me four days three three days of waiting not consecutively I didn't sleep there but I I returned for three days in a row and I was in Berlin for four days during Lobert and I thought I was going mad although I've got the whole city of Berlin and Here I am at this memorial because I believe in a shot enough to know just to sit there and wait for it and I got out I was really happy with it but it's so long to happen yeah and it's that kind of thing where you trying to control your brain being like what are you doing Alan you're an idiot what are you doing here but you know just sitting there and patiently waiting and watching it's actually someone told me that it's meditative and they said that I must be quite good at meditating I thought rubbish she'll never do yoga or anything any of that but they were like you can sit in a place for three hours and just look at something and you're happy doing now but ya know like that's pretty that's cool I don't know but I never used to be able to do that for street photography any other questions I have a question um I was gonna ask you how long you go out and everyday but you just said one and a half hour but how about the editing like you know do you go yeah do you go back that day and look at your picture immediately and how much time like proportionally what you do mmm I don't like anything for ages I feel like if you've got the image right it should be really quick so if you're sitting there messing around sort of wrong word they're messing your hair with an edit for an hour not so good I think something's gone wrong at the time of shooting it you know it's like cooking if you need to season it and we season it really you know you don't say it's gone wrong you probably done something wrong or you've got the wrong materials and so I don't know I'll look through my images I look through every image if I take a hundred images in the day I look at every image a lot of people skip over all their images and they go for the one that they think was good well they take 800 images because there's doing the spray-and-pray thing and they don't look at them because who wants to look for 800 images so yeah i will spend maybe an hour and evening editing dependents and like that hour-and-a-half thing is i'll often walk around with my camera on my shoulder and just i'm not walking around like looking i just kind of go around like you're tourists almost and then when i see something then i engage with that so i might be doing an hour and a half of photography but it's like broken up over a day before i'm just walking along and having a beer and then stopping for half an hour and really focusing and then taking an hour off or whatever I don't know it all depends and I mean for example I was in Nepal for one day at one point one day I was like I'm not gonna be back here for a while I'm gonna shoot all day and all night and I did so depends of the situation as well and how tired am o microphone hello I um sorry I missed the first part I wanted to get here but um murdered many of your shots involve subjects by themselves single people and Bureau I don't know if that's already been asked is it difficult to isolate them in these urban environments like that do a question uh yes I suppose although I'm kind of I do it a lot now so I find it a lot easier than before but I it's not so much necessarily shooting one person at a time it's more just making the subject clear so eating this the subjects meant to be that the two who looked are there waving each other I think it's quite obvious I mean this almost didn't happen because there are people walking by and I wanted just one person but also the light was closing I cannot tell how stressed I was I was saying foul things I was shouting at people and that myself and looking like a mad professor but I got the picture which is important but I'm always looking for scenes that yeah subjects and environment and not a lot of clutter oh I realize that wand yeah I mean it's a thing you have to practice a lot but you know you can't do it huh actually you can you can do it anywhere if you know if you've got the right light as well if you know how to crush down shadows and hide people in shadows and stuff few time things right I think there's a question over here well you mentioned her wit and I definitely see the influence here in this shot yeah Chartier person but I was wondering who else you greatly admire in terms of our great street photographers okay good question um does anyone know fan ho yeah he's starting to become known now which is outrageous that he's not already he's massive in in Asia but fan ho someone put me on to his work while I'll shoots him my metropolis series and I was like this guy's kind of done a bit like this though he did it 60 years ago it's really annoyed but who else weirdly I get influenced mocked by other things other than street photography I really like like for example I went to a Jack Amati exhibition the sculptor died and that changed my photography almost instantly I was like oh this is a while ago and and I was quite struck by how human yet unhuman his things his work looked I just made me think possibly for the first time I thought wouldn't it be cool to present things really weird and warped and different but still identifiably based in no society today sounds very weird but yeah so you know that was a bigger thing for me than looking at a lot of photographers work for example yeah to know other other photographers I really like Steve McCurry Steve McCurry they're obviously Stephen Curry who else Robert Frank indeed yeah there are I don't know I can't think of them all right now but there are quite a few photographers who I've got their books and I spend a lot of time looking other people's work on Instagram just because it forces you to do so and yeah so it's interesting seeing what people doing today as well but to be honest I spend most of my time egotistical II looking through my own work and trying to figure out how to improve through that rather than looking at other people's like I think it gets you to a certain point unless you meet the person the photographer and you really get to know them and understand why they do things there's only so far looking a book can take you yeah to us especially I say Salgado yes I got me so god is ridiculous I do have a question hello you said you started with commissions and assignments yeah I asked this all the photographer's because of cartier-bresson myself do you feel more motivated when you're doing for an assignment a project or you know somebody is going to see it and waiting for that then just do bears no the question it's very different feeling what I'm shooting my own is when I'm happiest but I try and produce work that like some of these have been Commission's and I hope you wouldn't be able to tell which ones they are because I'd like to part my schpeel is that I offer people the same thing is my real art but for your brand you know I don't have like okay I'm in commercial mode I'm shooting there so now I'll go back to shoot my streak but it's just a different pressure I suppose although this is the thing and why it's so important to have your own style is that I'm now getting booked for things unlike my music days where it was like Alan the bicycle you know before the town bike the music everyone just give him whatever he would do it with this now when when I get booked for something it's not they can't just be like here's your brief do that if they booked me it's because they want this look and I know about this look more than them and so they have to respect me and not be difficult and it's wonderful having going in on that and then you get brought in at the actual creative the the storyboarding part of a campaign because they want you to help influence it and you know they need your input they can't just make something and because they realize they have no idea what you know how these pictures are made so they need your help but they want this look but they don't know how you know so do you see what I mean it's it's like oh it's important to have a style if you want to actually and that's what that guy meant when he when he said brands want to work with artists not with commercial photographers because if you you know they they want to be like oh mr. Pitt you know Brad we've got this photographer in today he's you she's amazing she does just these pictures we've read canvas and you know we're gonna do this kind of picture with you today it's gonna be amazing that's what they're kind of what they wanted here rather than you know here's a guy who's got a great day rate you know very good at different disciplines and he uses Nikon cameras or like you know they don't care about that stuff they want like someone who's got a style someone who's had features saying that they are an artist all that kind of stuff and then once you get to that stage assignments are actually not that pressured in the same way because you're not doing something for them you're just doing what you do for them you're not trying to reimagine yourself and get in you know like in music how I was asked quite a lot like this Brian wants to wants you to clone this Coldplay song but make it a legal version so you caught you copy it but you change that key changed a couple of chords around people do it all the time because they can't afford Coldplay who might be four hundred thousand pounds for a license whereas I was four thousand pounds or 400 pounds that's a point you know and that's quite kind of soul destroying and then that's had a lot of pressure because now you are having to recreate this Coldplay song that's much more hard that's much harder than you know just doing your own thing so to be honest a shooting for a client or shooting for myself is pretty much the same it's just the things that are hard is like when if they want high contrast stuff like this and then there's no Sun there's not much I can do about that I can't control the weather as much as I wish I could like to know your opinion about this new phase of about protest in the arts and I like your work so much because you don't have to show any protest it's just beauty or secular lights like I said that's the thing i-i've my like my series has a point to it but but I think I said before like I don't like pictures that require words to have to be understood I like them to be valid in and of themselves so it's like a collection of individuals that like an ideal football team lots of great players but who also work really well together as a team which never really happens in soccer but yeah for me like the aesthetic is is super important and it's enough to make pictures that are just nice-looking you know things that are satisfying to look at that's okay but someone said to me once there's painful person I said that properly this horrible person said to me you know what what's the point in what you're doing like you're just floating around taking pictures of people just art pictures you know there are people dying or in refugee camps you know what why aren't you doing that and this person works in marketing for some like Bank was like screw you you know ridiculous thing to say it's like saying that every writer has to be writing about war or saying that every you know it's just what to kill it's just nuts thing to say so you know there are some people are very opinionated with that I just like to take pictures like this my breasts on did it as well breasts on said saying really horrible about Ansel Adams he said while I'm out here photographing I think he was photographing like some family in somewhere he said I'm out here telling real human stories lausanne cells in the trees photographing rocks right and but Anton Adams his work was like eventually led to protecting the i-17 Park which is probably an achievement far greater than anything Brussels did in a real in real terms you know so you know I just think people should just do what they want and just shoot but you know I I think photojournalism is a really noble endeavor it's really badly paid which means that the good photographers they want to do it it's simply how this do it's often photo journalists are often trust fund kids you can float around and just go to war in Libya photographing you know it's so terrible you know they're normally like that often these days I see it so much it's really annoying whereas you know because you can't live off footages anymore unless you're a staffer but and those are like disappearing rate of knots as well because everyone just using stock photography so yeah and I recognized this because I was doing photojournalism and I was working in I've done that kind of work before like I've covered stuff in Africa I was doing that and and I just thought this is wonderful and really interesting and really enjoying it but it's you know what mortgage you know and weirdly doing this has been a lot better and so I thought I need to find a way to you know as much as I'd love to do photo journalist of all you know regularly and it's just just not worth it in in that sense and also it doesn't make a bloody difference unfortunately as you can see the news and real stories seem to count for not much these days that's a depressing way to end that kinda like that any other questions you don't be going home thinking oh we should off that question no oh yeah sawed off question what I usually do is I see a subject that I like and I follow them for a bit until they walk into a place that I can bear to photograph them and I worry about asking for permission or them noticing that I'm following them yeah what to do about that I feel like I'm pretty kidnap herbal and I don't want people to get like mad at me yeah sure they'd much rather you followed them around the me though like I'm photographing something oh ok so good question one your intent and your your energy level as in your vibe you're putting out is an important one if you're nervous people can tell and nothing looks more suspicious than a nervous person do hokey around them you know if you I've seen it before I've seen some street photographers you just like briefs Gildan I've seen him working before sometimes he gets it wrong and people get angry but I've seen him just God's people and he's just like hi and then to walk off and they're like and they you know and yeah and he flashes them and most of the time he is he is but but people don't beat he's alive I mean the way I shoot I like to not disturb my subjects and I'd hate I like you I you know the idea of someone getting upset because of what I'm doing is like the worst so I tend to shoot from the hip hence the zone focusing thing so I've got my distance is here and I've learned I've actually practiced a lot how to accurately shoot from the hip so that it's not just guessing and the way I do that is by using the same lens for like ages so you can start to pre visualize the frame at different distances then how to hold it you know straight and take accurate pictures kind of thing so that was one element but you know I don't do it because I'm frightened of someone shouting me because I don't really care that much I mean I don't care about I don't care about being shouted out I just feel bad afterwards for them being angry but I like to be discreet because let's find the pitch that that was weirdly so I'm taller than these guys who are either side of the frame this was shot like this like bats a really quick shot and then I moved it moved on I reckon if I had leant in and garden like this she her expression had changed instantly should have been like more like or maybe smiled some people smile sometimes which is weird but so I I do it to preserve the expression that triggered me to want to shoot the scene and it gets you out of a lot of weird situations but you know I've come up with little tricks as well ways to get around being seen wearing really discreet clothing helps a lot kind of I I keep my camera back I'll show you so I've got my camera bag here I wear it like like this and a lot of the time I'm just it's just like that I'm walking around and I can just see in it that it's a rock up and just be nice you know and then and there it is you know it's in focus it's great subject of course you know and a lot of stalkers would have to be like you know and then and then of course they're annoyed and then there is simple but but that thing about not feeling like you're doing something wrong if you if you're just like happy and confident and all like just tell yourself that you are when you're doing it people will suspect things a lot less and then the other thing is being totally willing to speak to them and another tip carry some business cards that have your name on it and then photographer and then you know that replaces the word pervert in their mind when they you know they go what are you doing here you go I'm a stream photographer they go what the hell's street photography and you go oh let me tell you about it here's my card you know I'd love to send you the picture I just took I'm doing a photo series on the most interesting people in New York and I feel that you typify this city because you just look like you've been here for it and then if you have the right patter people go well yeah I have lived here for 20 years you know you know my grandfather used to be on Third Street and you can turn things around I've never been really badly shouted at before one guy chased me once oh that's cuz he was asleep and he was probably hungover and it was lunch and he shouldn't have been asleep or hungover and ifoce must have just been angry and then just chased me but you know as long as you treat people with respect and you don't photograph from too many times it's cool you know what here's a good line if people get angry you say you know we've got CCTV everywhere you know you're not complaining about that kind of thing you're all like you know we've been captured all day anyway might as well be one beautiful picture don't it but but yeah the the business card thing is is cool and then having a thing that you can say so if you want to if you want to approach a stranger and ask them to shoot them before you know before the fact rather than after or like after getting noticed just-just-just off them be sweet about it and people you will find even New Yorkers will be open to it I I did a thing when I was scared of people at the beginning and I think anyone who isn't you know isn't respecting people enough but you get over that and I did this thing where I set a project where I would not photograph I would talk to ten strangers a day for three months and I did that and it was really weird but it was cool and I learned that most people want to be talked to and they're very happy that I spoke to this guy's old guy he used to be live in Jamaica and he moved to London like 30 years ago and he was sitting on the DLR line and I just had her next it when I was doing this thing and I just said good morning and he looked at me like and he said I've been here all this time now it's ever spoken to me on the tube on the Underground I said well let's have a conversation and then we had a lovely conversation I found about his wife who sounds lovely and about his job and I told him about street photography and then I took a picture of him at the end of it and it was a really nice thing and then you know because we've all got this face that we put on when we're on public transport which is like right all of you would look pretty hostile myself included on the train and then it took me or what you know a few goes of just talking to people and then you know you think all this person angry or they upset and they look like they're miserable and then you say hi and then they go oh hello and then they're just like any one of us they're just people you know and then once I just started getting over it and and now I can shoot you know I don't mind I once she resigned the fact that if you don't mind someone catching you then it makes it a whole it's fun but you have to have this thing this this spiel that you can give but mine was true you're now shooting people on the Underground and the Underground is a very advanced area to shoot because you know it's it's very private thing public transcend you know so I wouldn't recommend that don't go on the subway and do it but maybe somewhere like somewhere where cameras are always out anyway so like maybe Times Square you know where everyone's photographing anyway have a camera being there isn't weird people will just be open to it and believe me people especially younger people they just want to be photographed anyway because that's what they do selfie themselves all the time anyway and yeah if you've got your Instagram you can show them your work or show them other pictures yeah that's it but just do it bit by bit and that's it I suppose they're staying beat don't don't be afraid most people don't notice I have had one person notice and it might have been because I photographed him before and he wasn't happy about at that time and I found him like a year later and was interested again I just I feel that fear stops me from taking all the pictures that I want to take which is really a shame sure no I agree there's a shame like I said the one of the hardest things and one of the most necessary things for shooting Street is having a clear mind so you can actually see the stuff and being in fear it's a pretty massive obstacle to that so I agree like there's something that you need to get to just look at and get over but III had this thing you know I was shooting the back of people's heads and then one day I was like I've had enough of this I would actually be at the front of someone's face you know I've had enough and I just did it I was so frustrated and I just would have somewhat of a bad though they carried on walking like hmm oh nothing happened oh no they didn't care all right yeah the worst case scenario someone does say something you you you're already prepared for that and then you wrap them in the business car that's my technique anyway what do you think is it too late to ask for any online questions now there are any I don't know well maybe it yeah yes yes internet I have but I don't like it as much as 24 24 for me is that little bit different and it's weird like the distortion is it 24 is as wide as you can go where it still looks natural so like if this picture could have been taken with the 35 and then if I told you this was a 35 millimeter lens you probably would believe it you wouldn't be like no way but the it was a tight tunnel and I needed the 24 to get that shot now 21 and and lower it starts to look all warped and a bit weird but I personally find 28 looks 28 mil is the same as the iPhone the iPhone is a 28 mil now this is for a lot of people particularly those who you know start photography on their phones and then want to get more serious than they get 28 mil that's great but for me I I don't know there's something about it doesn't it's not as interesting as 24 the way the way it looks so I would rather use a 35 than a 28 and they're even those are quite similar okay I call that much [Applause]

Channel: B&H Photo Video

Views: 96,839

Keywords: b and h, b&h, b&h photo, bh photo, bh photo video, bhvideos, b and h photography tutorial, b&h event space, b&h photography seminars, bh photo event space, photography education, photography classes, photography lessons, learn photography, street photography, photography style, finding your style, finding your niche, monochromatic, monochrome, black and white photography, black and white street photography, visual storytelling, photography niche, find your niche, photo style

Id: BLaJtmxdRUc

Length: 93min 56sec (5636 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020