Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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What is a good photo? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by OleBentsBallonCirkus@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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So I'm going to Paris in a few weeks, and I will be bringing my new 70-200mm f4 for the trip.

However, i have this thought in my head that I don't really know what to photograph. I usually take pictures of people and situations with people in them, as those are memories I want to hang on to.

When I see a lot of street photographers on YouTube etc, I feel like they take some well framed and pretty, but also irrelevant images. Would they ever go back to an image of a busdriver they snapped at an intersection?

I'm not putting those people down, but I personally have a hard time seeing the real value in that. I guess that simply making a nice shot is a great feeling. And a really nice shot might o ly happen once every 1000 images.

But what makes a nice image to you? Can the image stand alone? Or does it have to be part of a series with a certain theme to it?

I'm looking for some fresh perspectives on street photography that will get me excited for my trip :)

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[–] createsean@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A 70-200 is not a typical street lens.

[–] incidencematrix@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

That could make it more interesting, by forcing them to work with different types of compositions than folks usually use...there can be virtue in mixing things up. But obviously some tradeoffs, as well.

[–] OleBentsBallonCirkus@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not really limited by conventions like that.

[–] Leif1013@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

While I am not a guy that would say street photography can only be done with wide angle, it is true that 70-200 is an unpopular choice. At 100-200mm it compress the image a lot, and it’s hard to get any kind of juxtaposition with composition. A more typical choice is 28-50mm.

I am not saying you can’t take good street photo with it, it just harder. Most of the street photo with tele lenses are limited to close up shot, which is fine but it could easily gets boring very quickly.

And to respond to your questions, it is very normal to have 1 good shot in thousands of photos. Alex Webb, a legendary street photographer once said ‘99.9% of your photos will be failure’, it’s not a easy genre to master.