Shooting from the Chest

Boardwalkers, 2010

When you’re walking in a crowd and you want to take pictures of people without draw such attention to yourself as will cause people to change what they’re doing, it’s helpful to have a few tricks up your sleeve.

Some photographers resort to long lenses in such situations. They’ll sit way off to the side and cherry pick shots of people without being noticed. I can understand why they might do this. But I’m one of those people who believes you need to get a little closer, even to the point of interacting with the subject. Besides, long lenses flatten the perspective. When you’re dealing with people it can look as if you were just phoning in the picture from another planet. I prefer pictures that make you feel like you were in the crowd.

Neptune Festival Crowd, 2010

Last Saturday I was back down on the Virginia Beach boardwalk getting in a walk and watching some of the festivities of the Neptune Festival, an annual event conceived thirty-seven years ago to bolster the tourism “shoulder season.” The first Neptune Festival was mainly a big weekend seafood party. These days it includes several weeks of parties, balls, 5k and 10k foot races, a parade, art show, bands, sailing regatta, sandcastle building competition and probably some other things I’m forgetting.

Channeling my inner Martin Parr, I decided before I left home that I wanted to get close to the crowd. I loaded the 18-35mm wide-angle lens on my camera and headed into the fray. This used to be my default lens because I like to see “wide.” But now I use it mostly for the slightly distorted perspective it gives, especially in low angle shots.

Normally, I’m obsessive about looking into the viewfinder to compose pictures. But for this outing I had to let that go. What I did whenever I saw someone walking towards me that I wanted to photography I lifted my camera to the middle of my chest and took a picture without ever looking into the viewfinder. As these pictures show, if you do that people don’t even look at the cameras.

The downside of this technique, of course, is that composition can be hit or miss. Some of the shots I took this way completely missed the subject. Some, like Fame, Like a Good Figure, is Fleeting, have focus issues. The man in Portrait of an Unknown could have been better positioned. Clearly, I’ve got some work to do perfecting this technique. But if I practice it some more I’m pretty sure I’ll get better at it.

Fame, Like a Good Figure, is Fleeting, 2010

Portrait of an Unknown, 2010