Takin' it to the street

Under the El, Chicago

I had a couple of errands to run yesterday in Chicago. One, pick up my daughter from Roosevelt University to begin her spring break. Two, pick up some equipment from a certain 110-year-old camera store.


Glance

Since I was bringing my camera with me to try out some accessories at Central Camera, why not engage in some street photography while I was in town? I've described my technique before -- camera hanging around my neck, wide angle lens, thumb on the shutter as I walked along, waiting for something interesting to happen near me and tripping the shutter as it happened. The lighting was wonderful -- overcast day, no hard shadows -- I set the camera on manual exposure and fired away.

It's hit-and-miss photography. One the one hand, since I'm not looking through the viewfinder, I can't really tell what I've captured until I review the shots later. On the other hand, if I had the camera pressed to my face, I would not have gotten the shot above, top -- as I prepared to photograph the lady on the street corner, I saw the bicyclist coming down the street out of the corner of my eye, reset, then waited for him to get into range before pressing the button. The framing you see is exactly SOOC -- no cropping. Lucky enough to be good or good enough to be lucky?

After a while, you can get pretty good at being able to "see with your hands." More shots to come tomorrow.


Exile

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.