GETTING COMFORTABLE PHOTOGRAPHING STRANGERS
Use the UMaine campus as a setting for street photography techniques. You can borrow a DSLR camera or use a smartphone or iPad for this assignment.
In street photography, often the fear of rejection is worse than the rejection itself, so practice asking, and practice dealing with rejection.
To build your confidence, try the “5 yes, 5 no” challenge.
Approach a bunch of strangers and ask for permission to make their portrait. You have to keep asking until you get 5 people to say “yes” and 5 people to say “no.”
You will discover it is harder to get a “no” than a “yes”.
If you’ve got all 5 “yes’s” but not 5 “no’s” — you need to purposefully go out and look for the scariest people you think will say “no.”
Also try to frame your photos in different ways–POV, angle, subject (just feet?). Try to vary your techniques. Bring all photos to class for review/discussion. Take risks, don’t be afraid to create unusual or even ‘bad’ photos in an attempt to learn something or be creative. Your task is not perfection, but experimentation & learning.
Basic Camera Settings:
- Focus mode Servo or Continuous
Setting the camera to Servo or Continuous focusing mode will allow you to capture moving and static subjects effectively. - Shutter speed 1/125sec or faster
- Aperture f/5.6
- ISO 400
- Lens 18mm to 200mm
- Drive mode Single or Continuous
- White balance Auto
Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is to help you face rejection. In life, photography, and everything else — we are slaves of fear. This will help you face your fear head-on.
Uploading photos:
- Use jpg image ( set camera to raw + jpeg ) OR use Lightroom export with Web preset)
- Use Preview (on Mac) Irfanview or Xnview (for PC)
- Max image size for length or width= 1024 px;
- Max file size = 400K
- Max resolution 72dpi
Post settings:
- Post Title: Assignment 3_FirstL ( First=first name, L=last name initial)
- Post format: Standard
- Post category: Assignment