The STREET PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY techniques of Joel Sternfeld

this video is sponsored by Squarespace if you need a domain a website or online store make it with Squarespace how do you create the perfect portrait of a stranger who should you approach how should you shoot it what setup should you use what qualities should you look for what should it say to its audience these are difficult questions maybe impossible ones but if I were to name one person who I feel has come pretty close to perfection with their stranger portraits it will be Joel Sternfeld Joel Sternfeld is by far my favorite street portrait photographer and by street portrait photographer i mean someone who makes portraits of strangers they meet even though some of these may not technically be on a street but this isn't important there are numerous things that elevates term Feld's above many other photographers in my mind he has an incredible eye for color he understands how to see and use a color palette with a subtlety in a skill level that i rarely see in the work of other photographers he understands exactly who to photograph and exactly how to frame them he's able to take a seemingly disparate selection of people from a wide range of social cultural and economic backgrounds and combine them into a single collection that just feels right together but most importantly and I think this is the thing that marks him out from the rest he is acutely aware of the limitations the myths and the manipulation of photographer employees when creating work and he uses this to create images that throw questions back at the viewer forcing them to reevaluate their own perceptions of not only photography but of the world this is incredibly clever image making so let me break this down a little [Music] over a period of about 15 years towards the end of the 20th century Joel Sternfeld travelled across America with his large format camera and took a series of portraits of strangers he met he called this project stranger passing my sister bought me the book for Christmas in 2001 and I have to admit that first I skimmed through it and I found it a little underwhelming it wasn't until later when I took time to examine the pictures in more detail but I started to realize just how brilliant these images were Sternfeld portraits are easy to underestimate on initial inspection they may not immediately scream brilliance but if you take the time to look at them I mean really look at them you start to notice just how packed with questions each images there's a subtle level of oddity that frequently occurs in his images and it's this that Sternfeld uses to challenge our preconceptions the people who stone fell photographs often fall into our cliched notion of types the teenager working at the supermarket the elderly woman shopping in a mobility scooter the businessman with his newspaper the tattooed trucker with his vehicle the fashion conscious consumer out shopping but then we stop and look closer we've got her hair style her color-coordinated outfit the large shopping bag but then we noticed the rabbit and we look at the title a woman out shopping with her pet rabbit Santa Monica California August 1988 why is she out with her rabbit the carrier is color-coordinated with her jacket is that intentional does she always take a rabbit out with her and she goes shopping and while her clothes and hairstyle hidden slightly at the power dressing fashion of the 1980s her pose and facial expression are slightly unconfident maybe she doesn't so easily fit into the category that we assigned for her in this one we see a woman a rollerblader in the midst of changing into more professional attire for her business meeting one foot still strapped into her rollerblades the other adorning a black high-heeled but she's changing in the street so this is clearly less than an ideal situation her expression is not one of carefree joy but of being reluctantly resigned to her situation perhaps with a hint of anxiety this is a costume change the subject in mid metamorphosis as she takes on the role of a different character a reminder to the audience that the clothes we wear and the roles we play are just facades to Wall Street interns sit having lunch in this shot the typical city worker uniform their conservative haircuts and they're serious expressions sit slightly odds with how young they are and the fact they're eating hot dogs a strange intermediate stage is these kids leave their adolescence and adopt the semi optics of adult life in the financial sector I think it's worth taking a second look at the mastery by which Sternfeld has composed this shot he's positioned the subjects in the center of the frame and he's using an 8 by 10 large format camera an 8 by 10 or 4 by 5 if you want is a particular favorite aspect ratio of mind I feel it's well-suited for portraits it's not square so we're still looking at either a landscape or a portrait shot but equally it's not too wide or too tall there's enough space for these subjects to breathe and this means that we get some environmental context around them he's using a fairly neutral focal length what looks to be the equivalent of around a 50 millimeter on a full-frame or 35 millimeter film camera so we're not being distracted by exaggerated foreshortening or compressed perspective it feels like we're there with them we're positioned on level with them putting the viewer in an empathetic position Sternfeld uses a shallow depth of field but not too shallow both the subjects are in crisp focus while the background is thrown into blurred abstraction be aware of this in your own photography learn how much you'll get in focus at each f-stop don't only shoot wide open just because your lens can go to F 1.2 be appropriate with your depth of field these are all standard practice for any good photographer but we're Sternfeld shines on a compositional level is in his color palette notice how selective the color is in this shot it's all browns and beige in pale gray blue there are no vibrant green bins or bright yellow taxis in the backgrounds he's been very careful to frame this shot without any of these distractions but stone felt use of color extends beyond simply avoiding distractions he also uses color to emphasize a concept like this shot here here Sternfeld is using color to draw the eye to our subject her vibrant clothes stand out against the darkness of a car the pillar that pumped the forecourt the overcast sky even her coffee cup balanced on the top of the car is just too plain black and white design I'm sure the pump just out of frames the left was covered in colorful signs and adverts but Sternfeld has cropped them out the result this gives us a disconnect within the subjects in her environment and it's one we can identify with no one wants to hang around at a filling station these are non places where we stop out of necessity the transitory nature of the feeling of oak tear becomes a metaphor for the bigger picture of American life this Sternfeld is documenting everyone feels like they're on a journey toward a desired end goal they're striving for a dream but one which they haven't yet reached Stern fails again has a strong color scheme here green and white with tiny pinpricks of red at first glance we see a woman start having a drink but if we look closer we start to notice things like how her skirt appears to be unbuttoned at the top maybe her skirt doesn't fit her maybe it's broken maybe it's an accident this serves to remind us that underneath her manicured appearance is a relatable human being trying to live the American dream the meaning of these images never feels forced compared to how many others Street photographers capture people Sternfeld subtlety and sensitivity showcases the respectful balance people never appear as caricatures but as genuine and complex human beings and it's through his awareness of the photographer's role as a storyteller that he's able to achieve this he knows well how every photograph is the result of a calculated series of decisions and not a representation of reality he said I could get my camera pointed to people and not point here the homeless person to the right of the frame or not include the murder that's going on to the left of the frame you take 35 degrees out 360 degrees and call it a photo there's an infinite number of ways you can do this photographs have always been offered for me the thing that holds this diverse collection of portrait subjects together is the sense of aspiration that comes through in each image an aspiration to find their place within this culture what these portraits ultimately say to me is that these people are more individual and unique than can be communicated within an image but together the collection becomes greater than the sum of its parts a larger narrative about American culture at the turn of the millennium but a narrative that's honest about its subjective nature the carefully composed images with their deliberate and meticulously crafted color palettes serve to remind us that these portraits are from the mind of an artist and not a piece of reportage photography that purports to represent an unbiased truth in my opinion this is exactly what street portraiture should do show a person going about their day-to-day life without pretense without judgment without mockery but with a humanity and a sense of unity and equality alongside the other portraits in the series this is why I think that Joel Sternfeld creates three portraits that are as near perfect as I think is possible I really do love the work of Joel stone Fell's and I highly encourage you to check out his other work because he doesn't just do portraits of strangers he's a great person just to have on your radar because he's such a master at what he does so I hope everyone's doing ok at the moment and I'd like to send a massive thank you out to everyone who supports me on patreon and everyone who buys my Lightroom presets thank you so much because that keeps an income coming in which means I can keep making these videos if you want to check out my life in preset packs I've got four at the moment and I'm working on a fifth I'll put a link just below this video where you can have a look at what they do and also a massive thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video if you're looking to make yourself a website which I highly recommend you have if you want an online presence that has a degree of authority then I really recommend having an actual website as opposed to just social media it just sets you apart from the others Squarespace is an all-in-one web hosting platform I've been using it for many years and so do many professional photographers and designers and film makers is extremely easy to use with simple drag-and-drop functionality the templates you can pick from a very nicely designed and they look very slick and professional but they were so customizable so it's pretty easy to get the site looking exactly how you want to there's no software or patches to install it's all done through your browser so you can update your site from wherever you are as long as you have an internet connection you can easily keep up to date with your analytics while you're on the go or even manage sales through your site as they offer a range of e-commerce tools I highly recommend them but don't take my word for it give them a try yourself because they have a completely free trial and I mean properly free not one of those trials where you have to enter credit card details and they start automatically charging you if you don't cancel it you just go to Squarespace calm and just start trialing your design and if you don't want to continue you just leave it but if you like it you can go to Squarespace com forward slash Jamie Windsor to get 10% off of your first purchase of a website or a domain I'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Jamie Windsor

Views: 175,282

Keywords: portrait, photography, strangers, photographing, photos, camera, lens, photographer, how, portraits

Id: yoze3Q8bZ-M

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020