Humour and Storytelling in Street Photography (feat. Josh Edgoose)

this episode is sponsored by squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make your next move with squarespace i've said it before on this channel that i don't think every photograph we take needs to tell a story i think there's lots of genres of photography that are just about good aesthetics but i do really believe in the power of photography to tell a story if that's how we want to use it my friend josh ed goose or as you probably know him at spicy.meatball on instagram is someone who for me really knows how to tell a good story with his frames and that's who i want us to spend time with today most of the shots he takes are quite wide usually between 28 mil and 35 mil and that means that he brings a lot of complexity into his frames they almost feel like street tableaus including lots of different subjects but he's good enough and patient enough in the way that he shoots that he's able to bring all those elements together to give not only a pleasing composition but also to give us a good story to look at and his images are often humorous focusing on the lighter side of life and our goofiness as human beings being in society together but he always puts a lot of empathy into his shots because i think he has empathy for people in general so you never feel in one of his images that the subjects of his photograph are the brunt of the joke that we're laughing at them and instead it almost feels like he's conspiring with these people together to tell us a good joke so i thought josh would be a great guy to chat to on this idea of storytelling with our street photography and especially using juxtaposition and humor to show images to the world that have a lightness to them that bring a smile to people's faces so i'm going to shut up now and let you hear from my friend josh ed goose [Music] so i initially i took an a level in photography at college so that was probably 15 16 years ago i mean i just saw it as an option like it was just like i'm going to do french geography maybe i'll do something that's just a bit less dry and i had no background in art or anything so i was like i'll try photography that kind of looks like a fun option and yeah i absolutely love that the thing with that course though we had to develop we had to shoot and develop five rolls of hp5 a week and that was all we could do which was amazing like having this dark room available i guess but for me it was just a bit of a struggle like i was really obsessed with martin parr and being able to like shoot in colour and stuff and it wasn't an option and i eventually persuaded them to let me take color photographs but digital cameras at the time were just these like two megapixel sony cybershot things and everybody was making these beautiful darkroom prints and i was just using this like two megapixel nonsense and like printing out with my like laserjet printer at home and it was just it's a bit embarrassing thinking about it so i finished the photography a level and then i kind of wasn't really hugely interested in photography for a couple of years i think i'm almost a bit like put off it by the whole you know rigorous art side of it and then a couple years after that i ended up starting a clothing business i was designing sweatshirts and backpacks and stuff and i realized i had to buy a camera to actually take the product shots and take pictures of models and stuff so i went out and bought a camera and the actual i actually found myself enjoying taking the photos more than i did designing the actual clothes i was making so i just kind of took a bit of a steer with the camera ended up carrying that around with me um i then took a trip to new york just a holiday and kind of saw all this action and stuff going on on the street and it reminded me of when i took my photography a level it reminded me of these photobooks i had of gary winogrand and john mirowitz and i was like oh street photography is a thing i've forgotten about that and i'm like i'm in new york i was actually at the um they have a uh easter sunday parade in new york on fifth avenue and there are people who like they dressed up their dogs in like easter bonnets and stuff and i was wandering around taking pictures on my iphone like this is so much fun and i got home and found my like original gary winograd street photography book and john morowitz and was like oh my word maybe i could give this a try kind of thing and i just kind of took my camera that i bought for taking these product shots and just started going out for walks and it kind of developed from there really i've just been obsessed with it ever since i do a lot of thinking about what makes a successful picture for me and i guess these days when everybody's a photographer which is amazing there are more photographs than ever i like to think that a successful picture is simply one that you want to look at for more than a split second it just stops you scrolling on instagram or twitter or whatever and it just kind of draws your eye in that could either be a nice flow of something across a frame it could be a nice color could be just the light itself anything that literally kind of stops you in your tracks for just a second longer than you normally would i guess that for me is a successful picture and something i like to keep in mind when taking pictures i guess i mean for me i really like to try to make a frame that's busy but not too busy over the years i found myself more drawn to maybe finding an interesting scene and trying to work on a picture within that scene i've found the times when i've kind of grabbed a little snapshot while walking along the street maybe the background's been a bit busy i prefer having more control over what's going to happen and for me that is simply maybe finding a location and maybe standing there for 15-20 minutes so i often like to find an area maybe an interesting wall or some kind of advertisement or something like an initial starting point and then maybe a nice flow of people and trying to build a flow of people across the frame again maybe not too busy and then simply just by being there and positioning yourself you are kind of increasing the chance of something happening i think street photography is a lot about where you position yourself and simply just being there ready with your camera and 99 of the time nothing will happen but simply by showing up and giving it a try that's that's the that's the best you can do i think in my opinion so i like in the street photography to just gambling really you gamble your time and you may come back with something more often than not you will come back with nothing at all you just have to invest your actual free time i mean any moment of free time i have i will go for a walk with my camera yeah i mean it's just been years and years of getting the miles in taking a lot of pictures thousands and thousands of awful pictures of nothing i mean to be honest i maybe get four or five pictures a year i'm actually like ah this is what i've been trying this is what i've been trying to do this whole time this is what i've been aiming for but more often than not yeah they aren't they aren't great and that's just what it comes down to but i think the biggest reward is when you do get a picture you are happy with i mean i mean i say that i mean the reward is getting the pictures you're happy with but there have been times when i've gone for a long walk gone home absent-mindedly the next day just formatted my memory card and wiped everything and i've kind of thought to myself it doesn't really matter like i had a nice day i went for a walk and took some pictures so i really just like to try and keep as relaxed and open-minded about it and just kind of take what the street has take what comes and if it comes together it does if it doesn't it doesn't and i had a real problem with that when i first started out every time i went out i had this huge pressure of like gotta take some pictures gotta gotta gotta get it on instagram gotta keep the momentum going every time i went out i'd have this like crisis of like do i know how to kind of have i've forgotten how to do it i think i think for street photography it's a lot about momentum as well i find when i first go out with my camera i'll be like maybe scared to take a few pictures and then as the day goes on you almost have to like build yourself up into it there's a whole kind of almost like pep like pep talk for yourself as you go along it's like no you can do it it's okay and the kind of i really over the years try and try and harness that momentum from the word go and be like it doesn't matter i've got my camera gonna go for a walk keep an open mind and that's it at the end of the day but um yeah it's uh that was a went off on a bit of a tangent there but [Music] to be honest the first time i took a kind of slightly funny picture i was like wow i didn't even know this could even be possible i've seen like humorous street photography pictures okay this is something i really want to delve into for me i've always tried to maintain that i don't want to take myself too seriously i think that's just really important and then when i first moved to london 10 12 years ago whatever i was kind of i was almost a bit scared of london i was a bit intimidated by it i thought people aren't maybe keep themselves to themselves maybe people aren't very friendly but just going out and seeing people on the day to day i realize there is this like there is this everybody does have a sense of humor there is this slight sense of community when people are on the tube people have this like mutual respect it's just quite addictive being like amongst people and building this empathy for what people are going through what people are doing and yeah i just it just comes from this kind of just like love of people and humanity and just those moments where people laugh or something weird happens and people are aware of it there was this time when i was on the tube a few years ago and there was this guy watching that episode of friends where ross gets stuck in his leather trousers he was watching on his phone he was just laughing like crazy and all the other people were like looking at him laughing and they were laughing as well and people like watching over his shoulder and laughing and yeah i just really like to try and have that light-heartedness in my pictures i mean obviously i do love more hard-hitting serious photography but for me that is those are the kind of pictures i've just ended up taking and i've enjoyed taking and i think there's a fine line like i really wouldn't ever take a picture that like makes fun of somebody it's more i think i like to think about like what would i feel like if i saw this picture of me appear online that's really very conscious i wouldn't ever want to kind of alienate it's more just about these kind of like randomly occurring juxtapositions or kind of slightly humorous moments so this picture in particular is probably one of the few pictures i'm taking i'm actually really quite happy with however let's actually taking it and getting this final image was pretty much an accident so i was walking down the mall in london it was a day of the trooping the color um there was this you know this kind of old route master bus driving down the street towards me and i sort of kind of positioned myself so i get it like silence like this has a nice vintage sign there's taxis coming maybe something will come together with this kind of like almost vintagey london that was kind of going for i didn't really have anything in mind but then as i was lining up to take this picture the red arrows flew over and uh yeah everybody kind of rushed to the bus windows they were looking out the window all the people in the taxi were looking at the window the bus drivers looking at the window and also the slight kind of mystery i guess of what is everybody looking at you can see like people like even fall from the distance are staring up at the sky so uh yeah that one was that was a complete surprise actually until i got home and i kind of loaded it up on my computer i was like oh okay something did come together here that's uh quite fun i took this last year actually so yeah 2020 was a bit tough for photographs but i managed to get one or two i was pretty happy with and this is one of them so i went for a walk that day around london ended up at marble arch and there was this like a selection of elephant statues and i thought maybe there's something going on here there's people interacting with them people sat on them i spent about an hour there wandering around and nothing really came together and then i ended up just going back down oxford street and was like well this isn't really happening i go down i go up and down oxford street all the time i'm going to go back to where these elephants were and try again so i went back there and then this family showed up and this teenager just climbed on top of one and did a backflip off it and i just quickly snapped a picture i wasn't really sure if anything had come together and then the kid's dad came up to me and was like i can't take this guy anyway it has to backflip off everything everything got home loaded up this picture and i kind of was just really happy with the flow of people there's kind of people on either edge of the frame there's a dad taking his like daughter off or taking his child off one of the elephants in the background i managed to get the guy in midair and uh yeah i just really i'm quite happy with how this has a nice flow of people different elements going on the kind of dynamic element of the guy backflipping the separation of it that's the kind of thing i really like to look for and i think um pictures like this maybe don't necessarily work very well on instagram just because getting this down to the size of a postage stamp can be quite hard to view them i do very often find that the pictures i'm most happy with without fail will bomb on instagram and it took me quite a long time to kind of come to terms with that i guess but uh pretty used to it now so i'm like i just have that as a rule of thumb i'm like i'm happy with this it won't do very well on instagram but the important thing is i went for a walk i had a nice time i came back with a picture i'm pretty happy with and yeah that's that really [Music] i used to use burst mode on my camera a lot for coming with just thousands of pictures i mean i don't know just because i've just i used it as like a crotch for so long and i was like i'm gonna turn this off and see what happens and you're like oh i do know when to press the shutter but yeah so i used to come home with just like thousands of pictures so a part of the job was yeah editing it down finding the picture and i i'm like not snobby about editing or any workflow i think like i love to crop i love to try loads of different different kinds of crops like with a big 20 like 24 megapixels there's plenty you can crop loads so i think about the whole process of you know taking the picture selecting pictures maybe doing some cropping and then editing the aft at the end as well maybe kind of you know boosting shadows changing the highlights white balance et cetera i do think of that as the whole process and that's the end result as well i mean there are some times when i'll be like oh i've got this picture and it looks fine as it is i don't do anything but yeah i like i like the whole the whole workflow all the way through i think it's the same as choosing a film stock in a way or making a print in a dark room it's just unfortunately spent in front of a computer which is not ideal but it is what it is digital photographs i found always quite flat so i really wanted to build up a specific look to my pictures and that's something i've kind of developed over a period of time i guess but for me i just wanted to get a more kind of film-like look but really punch into these colors so in london in particular there's this like naturally occurring like primary color scheme got the red buses there's a blue on the underground the yellow stripe lines around the roads so i really just like to kind of try and dial in to whatever colors are going on and really kind of make those punchy and stand out and kind of just have this consistent look to the colors in my pictures to kind of maybe accentuate this kind of like light-heartedness or humor and just hopefully tie it together into something a bit more coherent i guess it's taken lots of practice and my opinion and my tastes on the colors in photographs changes all the time i mean i've been trying different edits for years and years i'm now at this point maybe in the last 18 months two years where i haven't faffed around with this look too much so i'm like maybe i've got something together now but yeah i'm aware maybe in six months time i may be like oh my skies should be a bit more purple you know it's just hard to step away isn't it with editing pictures hard to step away yeah there's something about just like being amongst people dialing in with a camera i always try and keep like a kind of i think street photography is a lot about your attitude as well i always have a smile on my face to try and be as polite and respectful as i can like i mean at the end of the day it is mostly a hobby you know there's no real reason to be there so i think just always try and have that in mind like i'm just going out taking pictures and if everybody stops me like what are you doing i'll be like i just love london i've been taking pictures of london for years this was really interesting you were really interesting i've recently started stopping people and asking for portraits as well just to kind of add the extra element of just interacting for people interacting with people i really like just maybe trying to mesh the two together and build up like a portrait of like a local area or a city and just try and get more of like an overall story together i think that's almost like how i want to develop it i guess in the future and i guess that's kind of potentially where it's going to go but yeah just being around people i found also over the years i've definitely built up this kind of more of an empathy with people than i had before previously i was very much like in my own little world and you just kind of the more time you spend on the tube walking around london you realize everybody else has their own complicated life going on everybody has problems everybody has things you know it's just uh you kind of just being around people you become more and more aware of that and i've definitely found that just being walking around with the camera has just generally changed my attitude towards people and just the way the world is i guess in the long term i really just i mean i'm just obsessed with taking pictures and i want to just take more pictures around the uk i mean over the couple months of the summer i want to go to a few different seaside towns just really almost i want to take what i've learned over the last 18 months or so of kind of trying to dial into more little details and little how to use color a bit better and really kind of build a kind of broader body of work around the united kingdom i guess and just it's just really exciting i feel honestly feel like every time i go out with my camera i take away something new either and how people interact with each other how to approach people for taking a portrait how to kind of deal with whatever light's going on it just every time i go out it just gets more and more exciting and i honestly can't see myself doing anything other than just taking pictures all the time it's just like yeah just pumped sean [Music] so i hope that's given you a lot to think about maybe even given you some ideas about how you can start to approach narrative street photography if that's something you're interested in i'm going to leave links down below to josh's website and his instagram so make sure to go take a look he also runs a youtube channel with his friend shane called frame lines i'll leave a link to that below and they explore all things street photography if you're interested in actually owning some of josh's work and supporting him as an artist now's a great time he's just published his first monograph called brilliant parade with satan to books i'm going to leave a link to that down in the description make sure to go along and pick up a copy and be aware that these are limited editions so once they're gone they're gone so if you are interested act sooner rather than later and finally before i leave you with a selection of some of josh's images i just want to say thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this episode if you're looking for a new website or a domain they're a fantastic option i've used them myself for almost a decade now for all my online work as most of you will know i sell a limited edition book and my own photography at the beginning of each year and i remember the first year i did that being really nervous about setting up an online store because i thought it'd be so complicated but the more i looked into it with squarespace the easier i saw it was the financial side of things integrated really easily with stripes so i really didn't have to worry about that and then i could see orders coming in everyone would have their order number i could see the shipping information coming in and all those details and then as i received that order an automated email is sent to the customer letting them know that i've got that and when i ship that item another automated email is sent with all the tracking information and it's all done automatically so it couldn't be simpler something that i thought would be really stressful ended up being really easy to do start your free trial today at squarespace.com and go to squarespace.com forward slash sean tucker to get 10 of your first purchase [Music] hmm [Music] you

Channel: Sean Tucker

Views: 44,722

Keywords: street photography, photography, josh edgoose, spicy meatball, humour, storytelling, leica, cameras, lightroom, london, tattoos, story telling in photography, humour in photography, empathy

Id: z-x2qLeLXNo

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021