How To Take Photos Like Robert Frank

this video is brought to you by camera i think i i was passionate about losers that was maybe the political that people that were taken advantage of that really couldn't make it that would never make it those people i was i felt passionate about welcome to the second episode of how to take photos like last week we learned how to take photos like vivian meyer and we tried to replicate her style and if you haven't seen that check it out here in today's episode i'm gonna break down how robert frank took his photos and we're going to try to replicate his style robert frank as a swiss photograph the americans i'm here in coyoacan where frida kahlo used to be and this is her museum we're not going to go in there and there's always a huge line but here we can capture what i think is quintessential mexico and if there's any photographer that you wish me to cover in a video just let me know in the comments and then upload the ones that you like the america robert frank saw was funny and sad dimly lighted and often lonely his friend the writer jack kerouac wrote about him with that nice little camera he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of america onto film that little old lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons what's her name in a dress after seeing those pictures wrote kerouac you end up finally not knowing anymore whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin so when i think mexico i think a lot about the tacos the salsa the dancing but also mexico is the best but also a struggle in some part of the population and how polarized it is between rich and poor so today i want to focus on these things i want to photograph on their love for their country their food and their story [Music] what am i missing [Laughter] the cold i will call we're very proud of our culture and your history and you're very proud in general in general i will see if i can find that for you in the photos i will take robert frank was a pioneer in street photography and documentary photography and as you hear wesley saying right here if you look at so much photography of today it really comes directly from the americans by robert frank and what's really cool is that rob frank is he's swiss you know so he was a foreigner traveling in a country which means he had a different viewpoint different eye for like what was important in terms of what he would take photos of and that video is from my youtube channel where wesley is talking about the great photography books of our times i will link it up here so you can check it out if you haven't [Music] right now there's still corona times here in mexico city which is why as you see here everything is locked in and closed out there's still a lot of people around so we can still get the photos but it's a little bit different vibe and everyone is wearing the mask but that's how it is and we need to work with what we have but ccc and by the way i put a link to the americans by robert frank in the description if you need one street food stock with your book it's that one because like wesley said it's the one that paved the way for so many street photographers coming after him i wasn't fast enough for that one the majority of robert frank's photos they were shot on black and white film i don't even know if he shot color so we're gonna today we're gonna shoot with the roller flicks again and i'll keep shooting a lot with this and then i have some kodak tracks and some ilford hp5 both black and white rolls and we will see what we can do with it how i see mexico today is very different from how i saw it when i just arrived in mexico i think four years ago from now like when you just arrive to a new place you see everything with fresh eyes you see the first taco stand and you're obsessed about it and now i walk past a lot of the things that when robert frank took his photos he stopped up and he photographed so looking back i have more photos that are probably more mexican with fresh eyes so now i need to like go back to how i saw things before and see if i can capture that i would like her to reach out for some of the things that i hear but i don't know if that's going to happen the reason why i pick koi kan for this trip is because it has a little bit of everything it has like it's kind of safe here it has the tourism but it also has the locals and actually right here in number 35 is where me and my family stayed over christmas where all of us stayed here so if you ever go to mexico this is not a bad place to stay it's difficult this thing and like having another photographers follows in mind while you go out i need to like adjust myself but that's why we're here and also with this corona thing happening where everyone is wearing masks and everything is closed makes it a little more difficult and i will try to minimize all my excuses starting from now on we need this bus away another thing that is super mexican in my point of view is the generations so in mexico you see a lot like a closer family between the granddaughter to the mother to the grandmother and every sunday a lot of people they go with their families to eat food and gather around a meal so if we can focus on a little bit about generations that would be great too i wonder if we can go in the church like a lot of people in mexico are religious and maybe we can do something in there see perfect is petrol it's difficult i don't think we have enough light in there i went to like 2.8 f which is as wide and fast as it goes but let's see one thing i would like to address is this that is very relevant right now it's when you take photos of people who are obviously less fortunate or lives less privileged than yourself and i'm well aware that when i go around and i do street photography in mexico city a lot of the people who i photograph will clearly be less privileged than i am and when you look at robert frank's photos he photographed a lot of different people but a lot of the times he was photographing down you could say like photographing people who are less privileged it's okay to do as long as you do it the right way and as long as you have good intentions and i think when i walk around and i do photographs here like my mexican friends they are still supporting my photos like they think it comes from a good place but i think when you take photos like that of people who you are clearly more privileged then then you need to be sensible and you need to understand where they come from and you need to do it in a way that is with compassion instead of exploitation and i think robert frank did that as well i think it comes from this place of documentary and curiosity more than anything but based on so many of you guys who are mexican who watch my channel and comment on my photos i think the majority of you guys are supporting it which is great and which feels like i'm on the right track in terms of that situation [Laughter] [Applause] foreign gracias i think for some reason i messed up my shutter i just looked at my camera and i think it was 1 60 of a second or 1 30 of a second actually i don't know i think it happened in the church where i was just fiddling around a little bit too much but you guys have seen the photos so maybe they're very very shaky that's how it is i'm back to 125th of a second now so the guys over at canva watched my first episode called how to take photos like vivian meyer they liked what i was doing and they wanted to support the channel which i appreciate a lot let's say i would like to promote the prints that i have in my printer which i would like to then i open the canva and then i brush through the instagram story category to find a nice template for instagram stories like this one you see here this will do then i pick four photographs that i like from my print shop and then i'll customize it write a little copy to make it look nice and then i export it to instagram stories and that's it there's a lot more ways to use canva but this is just one example and i put a link to 45 days free pro trial in the description below vpn photo it's always good when you see like young kids with a real camera and not their phone out so we need to support them listen photos are difficult like when you look at his photos like you see here a lot of them are from afar they are of a group and they are candid photos where he not necessarily asked for the photos there's portraits here and there where he has clearly gotten permission but it's tricky [Music] [Music] [Music] how he photographed is very different from how i take pictures and he's a lot more like a fly on the wall and like he interacts a lot less with the subject but what he actually does is that he photographed the normal people before anyone else did like before photography was reserved for the people who were rich famous or obscure or did something completely different and it was really expensive photography it still is today though what he did is he captured the americans from a swiss point of view and that's what i really want to focus on this video i want to photograph the mexicans from my point of view another thing that is so mexican is all their cool markets and that was one of the most exciting things when i just got to mexico is to go to every market there's in mexico and check them out so let's see let's see [Music] [Music] when i first bought this camera i was very careful with the photos i took because it's only 12 exposures but now i think i get my photos per minute a lot up which is nice [Music] when i'm doing these photo walks it's so easy to get caught up in just going back to what you usually do and go by instinct which is something i always do so i need to keep reminding myself like robert frank what would he do but that's also why we're here we're here to get out of our comfort zone and learn from the greats and then maybe we can take some of what we learn and put into our own way of photographing people or whatever we like to talk about one critic called it a wart covered picture of america another said his photographs constituted a slashing and biting attack on american institutions it was just a travelogue you know it happened to be a little bit different kind of a travelogue that was my interpretation of how to take photos like robert frank it's very different from the photos that he took and he has paid the wave and he's a pioneer for so many other photographers for the next episode of how to take photos like let me know which photographer you would like to see and then we will upload the ones that we like and we can pick the next photographer to spotlight i hope you guys enjoyed this

Channel: Frederik Trovatten

Views: 74,027

Rating: 4.9545937 out of 5

Keywords: robert frank, photography, street photography, trovatten

Id: CX-ZvUsCWp0

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020