Tag: weegee

10 Lessons Weegee Has Taught Me About Street Photography

https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/05/10-lessons-weegee-has-taught-me-about-street-photography/
Photo by Weegee. Click to read more

Weegee is certainly one of the most infamous street photographers in history. Although he never called himself a street photographer (he worked as a press/news photographer) his obsession with capturing people was unparalleled. With no formal photographic training, he covered some of the most gruesome murders (and shots of everyday life) around New York City from the 1930’s to the 1940’s. Armed with a portable police-band shortwave radio, he was always on the beat for new stories to cover– and he even had a complete darkroom in the trunk of his car. This allowed him to get his photos to the newspapers as quickly as possible.

Weegee is also famous for the use of his 4×5 Speed Graphic large-format press camera and flash– which added even more drama to his gritty black and white photos. He was certainly one of the forefathers of shooting street photography with a flash (back when they used flashbulbs). He generally shot his camera preset at f/16 at 1/200 of a second, with flashbulbs and a set focus distance of ten feet (and didn’t always know what kind of photos he got until he processed them).

Many street photographers are under the false impression that shooting with artificial light in street photography is just a recent phenomenon. It started as early as 1887, in which the journalist Jacob Riis started using flash power to document destitute people on the streets. Certainly Weegee has had a strong influence on shooting flash in the streets to photographers such as Diane Arbus, William Klein, and Bruce Gilden.

If you want to learn more about the philosophy behind Weegee’s work read on.

Note: some of these photos are gruesome and NSFW. 

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75 Degrees of Intimacy – Markus Hartel

One doesn’t go up to strange men, women, children, elephants or giraffes and say, “Look this way please. Laugh –cry– show some emotion or go to sleep under a funeral canopy.”

From Naked City, Weegee

“f8 and be there”, the great Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, used to say, which quickly became a popular quote in photojournalism, and still stands to this day.  I personally live by this maxim. Being “there” is the most important aspect for street photography, being aware of one’s surroundings is paramount, quickness is key and total control of your gear an absolute must. Learn how your lens renders your scene, try to instinctively frame what you’re after – shooting the same (fixed) focal length at a time helps a big deal to master this task. I regularly rely on zone focusing and absolutely despise autofocus cameras, as I tend to find automatisms counter-productive on speed and on my creativity. The camera is my tool, and I control it, not the other way around.

Gary Winogrand experimented with different focal lengths, until he grew fond of the 28mm, which allowed him to get close enough to his subjects, yet this focal length allowed him to portray a person’s full body at close range.

The conventional conception of the wide-angle lens saw it as a tool that included more of the potential subject from a given vantage point; most photographers would not use it unless their backs were literally against the wall. Winogrand learned to use it as a way of including what he wanted from a closer vantage point, from which he could photograph an entire pedestrian from a distance at which we normally focus only on faces. “Figments From The Real World”

Markus Hartel New York Street Photography

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