Street Shooting

A photo-shoot out in the street may never end (click on the title to go to a Google-page link on 'Street Photography'). The shoot might take a long time if, like me, you're doing a 'Homage' project, and the photographer (Lee Friedlander) has been shooting loads of series over the last six decades. Trees (mature Californian Oak) , blossoming Japanese Cherry trees, sticks, thousands of street signs, war monuments, 'The Noble Worker', his friends, his colleagues, different sets of nudes at different times, and on and on. Oh yes, he incorporates his own shadow wherever possible, zillions of reflections onto windows, off windows, through shop-front glass, etcetera . . .
I'm getting to grips with the initially off-putting 'overlay' techniques he uses to build up and make tangential the 'real' subject of his imagery. I am loving it. Of course, I musn't 'copy' his work, but t's OK to do 'in the style of'.

I've shot loads of medium-format (I couldn't afford a Hasselblad as he used, but I borrowed a Bronica SQ-B which acts the same). I have learned to love Black and White again, and I've now got to go on a crash-course on 'Gelatin'Silver' printing; that's what he used, and apparently he prints ALL his own images.





















I went to the British Library to look through a couple of his limited-edition portfolio 'books'. I was very impressed by the toning and very wide range of shades of grey, which are alarmingly good.
One of my images in this post was shot on a Sony-Ericsson 'phone, another on a Canon digital SLR, and the last is a film negative shot using a large-format 'portable' 5" x 4" camera.