Thursday, November 7, 2019

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY


(Gray, 2019)
In our lesson on visual thinking we were told that we will be focusing on street photography and I wanted to know more about it. Personally, I never did street photography or possibly I did and didn’t realise I was. When I hear the words ‘street photography’ the first thing that pops into my head are teenagers and skateboards. I also wrote down skatepark as a note and idea to work on. But what is street photography about and how do you do it?

Street photography is, as Elizabeth Gray (2019) describes it, one of the hardest types of photography. It’s when a photo shows everyday life and it doesn’t only happen in the street. But this is not just a point and shoot situation, Gray says that even street photography has sort of guidelines. Some points she mentions to do in street photography are for example shoot people from the back, shoot from a distance, capture silhouettes, learn how to approach people, etc.

(Kim, 2012)
Another article I stumbled on was of the photographer Eric Kim, who I became fond of when I researched street photography. He says “[t]he most important thing in street photography is to capture emotion, humanity and soul.” (Kim n.d.) These things can’t only be captured when you have people in a photo because I think even a building or object can show emotion and have a soul. Kim suggests similar things as Gray like the decisive moment and elements.

In conclusion I think street photography is a very open subject to play with. You do not have a limit on subjects and location. I think everyone can create their own thing in street photography and truly express themselves.


WHAT IS VISUAL THINKING?

During our first lesson, we were asked “What is visual thinking?” I think that visual thinking is when you, for example, use a mood board to generate ideas, but there is more to it than that. The definition of the word ‘visual’ according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “something (such as a graphic) that appeals to the sight and is used for effect or illustration.” Therefore, visual thinking could be any form of thinking that you can see. It’s when you take note of a thought using either simple words or images and more.  

When researching visual thinking I came across a TED talk by Todd Cherches (2019) about the power of visual thinking. In the talk, Todd Cherches mentions two phrases which I understand their meaning better now that I have a better understanding of visual thinking. Cherches uses the phrases “I can see what you’re saying” and “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In the TED talk, he talks about the importance of visual thinking in our life and references to when he was in China and the only way to communicate was visually because of the language barrier.  He goes on to say that now a day's visuals are very important to get the attention you want because people are focused a lot on digital media. Cherches also says that it helps us remember and referencing the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  

Mathias Jakobsen (2016), a writer for the website Medium, says “Visual thinking is not illustration! Visual thinking does not mean replacing the word “car” with a drawing of a car. And being a good visual thinker has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to draw.” As I said before you take note of a thought using words or images because words count as visual thinking. Jakobsen suggests practicing visual thinking by ‘putting things on paper’.
Page from my personal sketchbook.