a dogs eye view, my experience of street photography

My local photography/image club decided it was time for us to experience street photography, to try and capture moments of every day life. Now not knowing anything about street photography, I decided to read up on what street photography is all about.

Now apparently from what I read, you either need a shit load of confidence to go up to someone and ask 'Can I take your picture ?' and when they ask why DONT say its because you look a wierdo or slightly freakish. Try 'you look like a fascinating individual' or 'what an interesting face you have'

The other way of taking street photography is take it from a distance, to stand still in a place and let life and events happen around you. Not wishing to upset anybody and avoid getting get a good kicking, I decided to take the option of the more secretive style, observing from a distance.

Now bearing in mind I am not the most confident of people and standing in the middle of a city with a camera can be much like that dream you have where you walk around with no clothes on - so how the hell do I take a photo? After a lot of thought, I ended up taking inspiration from my dog. As I have watched her grow up, I see how she looks at the world, the angles and sees the things that I see everyday differently. I slipped my small camera up a wide coat sleeve and when I wanted to take the photo, I let the camera fall down into my hand and with some nifty finger work to switch it on, I could take the photo. I took them blind, no lining up or assessing the shot  - it was quite freeing actually.

I wandered around the city, firstly trying a few urban type shots to test out my technique.

Then as I got more confident and caught less, I angled the camera to give different views. Some gave some quite startling views, some gave some startled views (when they did this I tended to move away quickly)

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I then decided to sit on a bench on the market square and watch the world go by. I managed to take these ones even though an old man kept hitting me and the bench with his stick because he wanted to site down on the bench I was on, the empty bench next to me wasn't good enough apparently.

Whilst secretly taking photos was strangely exciting. I do think I made some people a bit nervous and may have been mistaken at times for the DHSS. I also felt slightly uncomfortable taking photographs of people without them noticing. What it did teach me though was to get a different perspective on life, see the world like a dog.