in this episode of The Breakdown I am
here in New York City with Sony Artisan
Ben Lowy, and we're going to talk about some
tips for shooting street photography.
Welcome back to The Breakdown
my name is Miguel Quiles and I am here
in New York
with Mr. Ben Lowy Sony Srtisan. And so
tell everybody a little bit about
yourself. Well.. I'm a Gemini and I like
long.. what no! lol.. I have done a lot in
photography in
terms of like working in different
genres over the years, and that's kind of
what I like about photography, and having
a camera, for me for my career, it's been
about a lot of experimentation. I started
you know, doing conflict work for about a
decade. I moved on to sports for a while,
I've done fashion, right now I'm working
primarily underwater, doing a lot of work
with sharks, but you can't do that on the
streets of New York. No unfortunately..
Well there are some sharks, but
not that kind of shark! Right?
I always have been inspired by street
photography by walking around, by seeing
the city by using photography and street photography
as an excuse to explore, to go down
a different road, to look at places that
I have no reason to go to. You know it's
harder to do with when, when, you're
working constantly, but there were a lot
of times when I was younger, where I
didn't have as much to do. Yeah. Not as
many jobs, and I would just find myself
walking across the whole city, and really
trying to create this work and it's
where you actually find out a lot about
yourself. How your eye works, how you see,
how you sketch and conceptualize. Your
approach to photography. What you notice,
and how your, you know, your mind thinks
about image making. I am pretty,
I'm like one of those people who stacks
coins and makes sure all my wires are in
like collected.Yeah! Even if they're
like behind. I believe that's called OCD...yeah!
Well I mean, I, I like to be organized, and
it comes to you and a lot of my images.
I like, especially when I'm really trying
to compose a lot. So for me street
photography when I'm not doing it as a
photojournalist, or as a storyteller,
then I'm just going to explore. For me
it's all that, the thing about
photography is you are trying to control
the serendipity of life in any, in any
part of photography, you're trying to
compose and you're trying to make an
image, not take an image!
everyone else, you know has their camera
phone in their back pocket, they take,
they take pictures, we as
photographers, what, what I think kind of
separates photographers from everyone
else, is that you're trying to make an image,
We're trying to construct it, not by
moving things around but with your head
which by putting yourself in the right
spot and waiting for the perfect moment,
and so for me specifically when I'm
doing street photography, it's about that
organization and that composition, and
moving things around so I get it just
right. So I have definitely have a pretty
anal sense of how I want to do that
So it's a lot about negative space,
it's a lot about light, and it's a lot
about waiting for that moment where
someone comes in and inhabits that
perfect spot in that light, or in that
negative space, that makes street
photography so poignant for me.
I love Gary Winogrand's work and that's
one of the first photo books I ever bought.
When you look at it it's about the content it's about
the expression. The people that he came
across where composition wasn't as
important to him, and that's where like the
content came first, and for me I learned
a lot about that when I was doing my
storytelling work, but what attracts my
eye is not that. Right! It's, it's seeing
shafts of light within the city, it's
seeing these spaces that people inhabit.
We could actually talk about that.
That's, that's kind
of like, I have three questions I want to
ask you, and one of the questions is
going to touch on that so, we'll we'll
we'll save that one for a sec.
So let's talk first, because what I want to do is
I want people to be able to get like a
sense of how you do what you do,
so the general questions that I think
lots of drugs right?...
The general questions that I
think a lot of people get or give are
how do you approach your camera settings
when you go out to shoot street
photography. Generally speaking like what
are you doing in terms of your settings,
you know I actually sometimes think that
my normal photojournalism work or my
underwater work. I have kind of I
really do like it with a shallow
shallower depth of field, where you can
really bring out certain details by
getting rid of all the other I
would call ambient details like
background details that you don't want.
So I definitely shoot with a much wider
aperture. So like a f/2.8 or... well
I've shot f/2 or f/4 ..you know underwater
probably like f/5 f/6 ...
whereas more common, most underwater
photographers shoot around between f/8
and f/11. Right. In the street you know it
really depends, am I moving fast? Do I
have time to think am I just stay in
one spot and waiting for people to move
through it, and then you really don't
know where your exact plane of focus is
going to be. So maybe that's when I'm like
oh I'm going to mix this up, and put this up
to f/22 or f/16 and just focus on one
space and then everything else you know
and have like a really big depth of
field, where a lot is going to be in focus
and then and just like, let it rip, it
depends, if I'm really trying to get that
crowd shot with many faces illuminated,
Do I want to create? I love layers,
I love having like a really strong
background, a foreground and other
things going on, then there's a lot you can do
with it, you can layer, you can layer
with like you know, you can layer like, we
you know, you have like leaves behind us.
Like you can layer with that, but let's
say you don't want the detail of the
leaf, you just want it to be a green blob.
Well then it'll open wide, verses closing
down, and I think you know having that
creative control is great, so especially
because I'm shooting raw. What I'll do is
I'll find that great middle ground with
the light. That'll be my setting whether
it's f/8 you know 200th of a second at
400 ISO that'll be that, and then I'll, you
know, I can still shoot whatever, and move
it around, you know, one or two stops, and
you know, with my aperture. Like you're
shooting at a higher shutter speed?
If you are moving and
your subject is moving, or moving across
the plane that you're photographing. Yeah.
I want to shoot with a higher shutter
speed, because I don't want motion blur.
Right if your subject is just coming towards
you, you know, I feel like I want a higher
shutter speed at least around you know
200 to make sure that I'm freezing,
freezing emotions. Yeah! So let's talk
about lenses, and I know there's always
kind of this thing where people say for
street photography, they just use 35 mm.
That seems to be the the most popular
focal length for shooting street
portraits with street photography, but
what do you tend to use the most then?
What's like your favorite focal length
for city street?
I mean definitely my favorite is is the 35mm
I think a 35mm is
wide, I mean 35 is wide enough to get
most. Sometimes I wish I was like,
slightly wider, but then take a step back
right, you know when you take a step
back from the 35mm it's a 24, when you take
at least my steps
When you take a step forward it's a 50mm Right?
I mean you don't have the same compression and
you don't have the same like this like wide
open sense that you would get with a 24mm
but it's a good all-around lens when you
don't want to be changing too much. But
again you know, it depends like, there are
times where I've gone out and shot with
a 135mm because I just felt like having
this kind of long look at everything, and
it's a very different feel, it's very,
it's less intimate, but then again
sometimes when you shoot with 35mm, I'm not
trying to get like this on a person, that
is, is, it's not my style and my approach to
shooting so
I think it's a really good idea to play
with different lenses when you're out
there. I mean I you know I travel with a
50mm and 35mm and those are kind of my, my,
go-to. But like I host, you know I have, you know a
wider lenses and I also have longer
lenses, and it you know it depends how I
wake up that day, and what I want to
shoot. Right! Alright. So let's talk about
how you approach street photography
creatively. So we talked about the lenses
we talked about camera settings.
Creatively what are you looking for and
how, what would you recommend to
photographers to look out for, when they
go out to shoot their own street photography.
Well you know for me street photography
is an excuse to explore. Yeah.
But it's also a way to see, and try and
see a world, that we already know exists.
Like, let's say New York City you
have this preconceived idea of what
already it looks like. So how can I be
creative and try and show it a little
bit differently, and so for me that's
what my exercise is like, how can I
approach with my unique, you know
proclivities for how I see, look, what can
I do to create a make an image that is
in a place that people already have this
idea, of what it looks like! And I
want to show something a little
different. So you know for me light is
really important. Negative space is
really important using objects to help my
composition whether that's other people whether
that's things and reflections and really
heavy foregrounds. So what kind of things
are you looking at like, when you're saying
things, what is that? I'm looking at
heavy foreground elements that I can use
to place people within spaces, like even
scaffolding is amazing because you can
use it almost in a way, it is like cutting
through and creating this actual golden
rectangle and putting people within it
you know a rectangle.
I love doing that and it's a real
exercise in patience and waiting, and
waiting, and waiting, for, yo, know you
will never run out of people walking on
the street in Manhattan! So that you know..
There's, you know, everywhere I
look I see a picture. I see, let me tell
you that, everywhere I look, I see the
potential for an image, and then I wait
for that image to happen, and it's a
little bit different than waiting and
reacting instantaneously. It's something
that happens in front of you, which
is a perfectly good way and great, you
know traditional street photography!
It's not kind of how my photographic mind
works, if I see something and I say this
space, this environment speaks to me
about the city, and then I wait for a you
know a denizen of the city, to have in that space
Kind of reminds me of how people used to do when
they shot film back in the day, because
you only had you know 24, or 36 exposures
so you didn't go and just rattle off. I
know, I know, it was this thing back in
the day it was pretty cool, but it kind
of reminds me of those days where you
would go out, and you would be very
judicious of the shots you took, and you
could sit and you would wait for
something to happen in the frame. Well I
mean you know like Gary Winogrand, not
necessarily judicious, died with 10,000
rolls of film, still, stills.
And if you ever watched video or
film of him shooting you know you
choo-choos, you just just keep on going
...just keep on going! And that's one way
to do it, you know, it's just it's not how
I think, and I appreciate the
photographers who do do that, but I'm
always looking for some way to control
the chaos, rather than just picking
moments out of the cast, because that's
what it is, that's what life is, life is
chaos, and we as photographers, we're
trying to put the chaos into this little
rectangle, and so that's hard enough right
and then to make it even harder is like..
Oh you know, how can I even make it more so?
Alright everybody, so we just wrapped up
a really fun morning of shooting. We will
see you in the next episode of
The Breakdown. Bye everybody.