{"id":112,"date":"2010-06-30T02:44:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T06:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2010-09-28T12:06:14","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:06:14","slug":"5-tips-to-overcome-your-fear-of-shooting-in-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/30\/5-tips-to-overcome-your-fear-of-shooting-in-public\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Tips How To Overcome Your Fear of Shooting in Public"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the questions that I am asked quite often is, “How did you get over your fear of shooting in public?”<\/em><\/strong> To answer that question, I got over it by simply going out and constantly shooting in public. However it definitely does take a lot of practice and effort to build up that courage of shooting in the streets without feeling like a “creeper” or out-of-place.<\/p>\n

For those of you who may not know, I recently graduated UCLA with a B.A. in Sociology. Therefore when it comes to photography, a lot of my sociological thoughts get intertwined as well. In many introduction sociology classes, teachers often assign students “breaching experiments<\/a><\/strong>,” which involve doing things which violate certain “social norms” which may make you and others feel uncomfortable. However I have found that by realizing that these social norms which govern everyday life are not concrete and can be bent to our whim, I quickly got over my fear of shooting in public.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
"A Lone Dinner" - Los Angeles 2009 - Eric Kim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Therefore these are some sociology breaching experiments that I have put together which could help you first get over your fear of looking “strange<\/em>” or “awkward<\/em>” in breaking social norms (such as taking photos of strangers in public). Although these may seem quite easy on the surface, doing them in practice is actually quite difficult. I have been making it a point to practice these breaching experiments as often as I could, and I can admit that I still have a long way to go until I could have enough courage like street photographer Bruce Gilden, who is famous of taking really up close and personal images of people. [YouTube<\/a>].<\/p>\n

\"Bruce
Bruce Gilden, New York City, 1986<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

5 Sociology Breaching Experiments:<\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Make eye contact with strangers and do not look away. If they stare back, smile and see how they respond.<\/li>\n
  2. When entering an elevator, turn the opposite way, even when everyone is facing the “right” way.<\/li>\n
  3. When walking down a busy street, suddenly put your things aside and lie on the ground for five seconds. Then stand up and walk away.<\/li>\n
  4. Smile and wave at a random stranger. See how they react.<\/li>\n
  5. Now take out your camera and take a photo of a random stranger. Observe what happens.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Help get the word out there and share this list with your fellow photographer friends! Post it to Facebook, your blog, or even tweet it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One of the questions that I am asked quite often is, “How did you get over your fear of shooting in public?” To answer that question, I got over it by simply going out and constantly shooting in public. However it definitely does take a lot of practice and effort to build up that courage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[67,68,69,21],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts","tag-5-tips","tag-fear","tag-public","tag-street-photography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/a-lone-dinner.jpg?fit=959%2C678&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}