Street Dancers

While dancers provide the technical challenge of capturing movement on a still frame, placing the dancer within a context that tells the story of a place or customs takes the photographer to that famous level of contextualizing.

From a technical point of view, modern cameras provide the “machine gun” shooting of dozens of frames a second hence the vast choice of choosing the best shot. For an anachronistic photographer like me, 50+ year old film cameras give me the choice of a frame every 3 seconds, which means that I would miss capturing many of the moves of the dancer.  Even then, I have only 12 shots in a medium format camera, or about 25 in a 35mm lightbox... (I say "about 25" since I roll my own film and often it is a guesswork.)  So, either one needs to know the dance, seen that dancer before, or be extremely lucky to capture a shot that goes beyond just a dance move.

I chose 6 shots of dancers each having a distinct character, and a seventh that may qualify as a dance…

      Dancer out of place

Here the “street” is a symphony hall. The dancer was out of place in the sense that the formal attire of the symphonic orchestra overwhelmed her presence. To the eye, her movements were too choreographed and not spontaneous enough. Yet, at a shutter speed of 1/30^th and wide opened at f=2, the 85mm Jupiter 9 lens on my Fed-2 camera did freeze a move quite gently. The eye of the dancer and the movement of the fan somehow isolate her from the formal background.

2.       Dancer in control

This one is all emotion and passion. Contrary to the first picture, this one does better not showing the dancer’s eyes.  I often wonder if in a still photo passion is better expressed with “eyes wide open” or “eyes wide shut”…

3.       Dancer who does not like the photographer

Why some artists, when they perform in the street, wonder why people take picture of them?  It seems to me when you have decided to perform in the street,  you have become part of the environment totally accessible to the public. Well, this Turkish dancer in Vienna did not care for the picture I took, which made the picture better….

4.       When all is not harmony

The New York Rockettes are world famous for their uniformity in appearance and their impeccable timing , especially when it comes to their legs. I took this one in New York and upon developing the roll, I realized that the lens was too slow and the 100 ASA too unforgiving for an indoors shot. But while the technical aspect of the picture is poor, it had captured a moment of non-synchrony among these amazing dancer—the legs are totally uncoordinated making the picture an unusual one for the Rockettes! One has to Google “New York Rockettes” to see how different are the pictures they show….

5.       When one can only guess

This is a picture of shapes and monochromatic tonality. The story can be anything, depending on the observer. What I like are the multitude of lines, movement, and public celebration of a sunny day in Baltimore, by the ocean side!

6.       Simplicity and Joy

One of my favorite street Tango dancing moments. Youth, posture, eye contact and sharing of traditions. Nothing fancy in this shot from Barcelona, yet one feels like being there can be a lot of fun!

7.       May be a dance?

In front of a hotel in Montréal. I shot this with zone-focusing my 1935 Russian FED camera, and contre jour. Yes, I do have one of these almost-a-century-old cameras… The lens of course is not coated and has survived an amazing century of human history.  I sometimes wonder how much of the past century’s changes were captured by this lens that had an unknown number of users before me.  I have adjusted the camera’s speeds a few times already, but the old springs (all original) and the fatigue of the steel parts makes all speeds highly unreliable. So, even more fun to see what comes out on the negative after I finish a roll!!

The lady was about to put her scarf on and I guessed that she would do so using the movement of a matador. After I developed the negative, I noticed that there was a man in the frame, which made me think of the bull, and I kept the picture just for the fun of it.

 February 24, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Not a Circle, but a Continuum

It is the change of seasons, almost.  While still surrounded by snow, daffodils will soon pop their heads out of the frozen ground.

Street photography, sometimes in a serendipitous way, captures the seasons of life, in appearance, attitude and behavior. So, I thought a collage of the seasons may be an interesting project.

The pictures are from Europe, The US, Africa and Asia taken on both medium format or 35mm film.

I wonder if the sequence I chose to describe the change in seasons makes sense to you....

February 22, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Cropping: Zen or Sin?

Those of you who have followed my blog for the past few months might have realized that like thousands of others, I learned and carried on street photography based on the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, justly considered as the father of photojournalism. And yes, like thousands of others, I bought a 1954 Leica IIIF to “bend like Henri”!!!! Of course, we all quickly realize that the camera does not make the picture, but the photographer does. Yet, the tool has to be reliable and appropriate for the specific task.

While having the eye for a story and the quickness to capture it, one has to also learn composition very early on. It is said that Cartier-Bresson did not allow any cropping of his prints: the composition was always during the taking of the picture and not in the darkroom.

Well, rare among us are able to apply that rule as a principle. Instead, we try to compose in the field knowing that we will re-frame in the darkroom. In this area of film photography, I am not a purist.

In fact, for me reframing is almost a necessity for the following reason: nowadays I almost exclusively use medium format. In my case, that also means using a “normal” lens the equivalent of 50mm on 35mm cameras. Unless I am ten feet away from my subject, the 50mm lens will capture a vast amount of detail around the subject I have in mind for the story. So, I have to enlarge (that is why they call the apparatus “an enlarger”!!) to isolate and reframe the subject. The result is a cropped picture.

The rather philosophical question that can haunt us is the following:  is street photography supposed to show the setting unaltered? Or is it ok to rewrite history?

For me, the part is integral component of the whole, so it is ok to focus on that part alone. Does it represent the whole? Probably not always, but my goal is to tell a story, not do landscape photography.

Ok, with these considerations in mind, I will use three pictures and their “before and after”—you decide.

Picture One: Paris, Seine River Bank

This has been published more than once and is among my favorites. The forms, angles and texture are what a B&W picture asks for. Yet, it was not framed as it is shown above since I was more than a 100 feet away from the subject and used a Mamiya 645 1000s camera with a 80mm lens (equivalent to 50mm in 35mm photography).

On the negative, the woman shown above occupied perhaps 1/50th of the frame. Around her, the shot included the following:

The critical factor here was that I saw the three sitting at the edge of the wall, I did not see any detail about their faces, but knew that the woman with the black stockings was perfectly perched atop those stones. In short, I saw the scene, the potential it had, and what I can do in the darkroom. This assessment, contextualization, focusing and clicking took about 3 seconds.

Which picture do you prefer?

Photo Two: Saõ Paulo

                                                                

This one was a reject photo since it did not turn out as I intended: the man did not turn around to give the shot the 1950’s flavor I was aiming for.  Still, I printed it and used it in my discussion of failed shots.

However, the full frame encompassed more than what is shown above. Here it is:

Clearly, instead of the man at the phone turning around, a bystander saw me and spoiled the shot even further. But cropping would have worked if the main subject had done what I was hoping for.

Photo Three: Paris, Champs Élysées.

This is also a published picture. I took shelter from the summer rain under a balcony and caught this shot with a 1969 Nikon F, 50mm lens. It has movement and the woman blends with the off-focus tone except for her left foot that is in perfect focus. It gives the movement a freezing, just for a split second.

But there was an invited young man in this frame and distracted the viewer’s eye. So, under the light of my 1950’s enlarger using a 75 Watts tungsten bulb, I gently asked the “intruder” to leave the frame…

So, cropping: is it Zen or sin?

January 31, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Rejected Pictures But Not Moments

It has been a very cold January on the East Coast of the United States. My old cameras cannot freeze and thaw without damage, nor can the 60 year old lenses. So, I have not taken many pictures this month especially since there are very few people in the streets and they are all bundled up!

But I keep on getting feedback from around the world, which is wonderful.  Among the messages I got last there was one question that I found challenging. It read, in part: “…and, if you were to describe a picture of daily life, without photographic glamour, how would it look?”

Hmm. While I do not think that there is glamour in my photography, I do indeed choose pictures that are technically with minimal faults and perhaps this selection bias does not truly represent what I had seen and taken pictures of. It is a fair question.

However, the reason why there is selection bias is often not a thematic bias but a choice by necessity.  Indeed, I have miles of developed negative strips that have either been damaged by chemicals during development, or where the pictures did not come out as I hoped they would. I do not usually print them, although I do have some “defective” negatives that I have printed because they remind me of a special moment and place.

So, the question I got made me wonder if I could make a collage out of these rejected pictures to show what I saw and why I took the picture, even if the quality of the shots ended up being poor. So here are a few of those.

The first one is from São Paulo. I saw the man walk toward old-fashion public phones and I could readily compose an anachronistic picture in my mind- a picture which could have been taken 50 years ago. What I needed was for him to make the call by turning sideways.  But it was not what he had in mind. Still it is the type of waiting a street photographer often does: I had a picture in mind but all the pieces did not come together.

The second one is from Paris. A very chique Japanese tourist caught my eye. I wanted the contrast between her impeccably coordinated attire and shoulder bag with the old buildings, a tourist with his suitcase, and taxi drivers. Just before I clicked she got something stuck to her shoe and she did a very “common” act of checking it. Not only it spoiled the picture, but I also got an uneven gradation from my lens right over her bag. Nevertheless, it is a moment from everyone’s daily life, even if they do not have the style of this young woman.

The third one is from Madrid. A street band in traditional attire was playing and I wanted to get an angle to the violin by focusing on it and blurring the background. Well, the player moved incessantly as he was in his “zone” while playing. And I did not get that steady moment for the shot I had planned.

The fourth one is from Vienna. A Turkish belly-dancer was performing in the street and she was quite photogenic. Still, I needed more than the dancer. So, I placed myself in front of her to include the crowd as the backdrop. She did not like it, and gave me a bad look… I caught that look but not the composition I wanted...

Finally, there are moments when a human is not needed for street photography. I was on an island in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Croatia, and the scenery was quite monotonous. Sure, the ocean was great, but I am not a landscape photographer. At times I felt that the ocean was like a fence… And then I saw this donkey that looked at me in a way that I could almost understand! Yes, the fence, the ocean, the lonesome tree in the back….

January 29, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Boston, Massachusetts

There seems to always be one in a crowd who does not care what others would think about his act. This was a Sunday noon, near the ocean and the Fort. It had rained in the morning and the puddle of water was just right for this man to take an auto portrait. 

While the ladies ignored this act of neo-narcissism, the older gentleman holding his fishing gear seems to wonder if Narcissus of Thespiai looked just like this (except for the digital camera...) when he fell in love with his own image in a pool of water and pined away becoming the flower Narcissus poeticus.

Hmm...

Had just a quick second to click on my Ukrainian FED-2 sporting a Jupiter-3, 1.5 lens, while thinking if today's cell phone self-portraits were accepted and encouraged forms of narcissism.

January 8, 2014
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Dodging and Burning

I took this one in Vienna, on a cold and rainy May afternoon. The entire front of the building was covered with this poster announcing the opening of "Palmers" store. The size of the poster itself, compared to the street lamp, was impressive.

At first sight, I wanted to use the man selling postcards as the story, since the poster is just a poster. But it was a cold day, the man was all bundled up in his coat, and the contrast with the woman in a bikini seemed promising. I had my Ukrainian Salyut C medium format camera with me, with a 90mm lens. But the man was just cold and had turned his back to the poster.

I waited a few minutes in the increasing rain, hoping for something to change. And when the man turned around deciding to cover his postcards with a plastic sheet as the rain was getting stronger, I took a second shot.

When I printed the picture, there was nothing special about it. The writing on the poster was distracting and made it obvious that it was a poster. Yet, the street lamp, its relative size and the man now turned toward the poster were intriguing me. So I decided to print the second picture again, this time with simple dodging and burning during the printing. No Photoshop in my shop! Just old-fashion over and under exposure of select areas by covering the photographic paper with my thumb's shade under the enlarger's light.

The result is below. Now, it looks like she is a chimeric model in this man's painting studio! I left the "P" of "Palmers" semi-apparent to keep the authenticity of the poster....

January 4, 2104
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Streets and Their Backgrounds

This will be my last posting for 2013. I thought a few observations about the choice of a picture's background would be appropriate for end of year musing...

While in street photography one does not have the luxury to take time and frame a shot, it is often possible to find a background you want to have for your story. Then it is a question of patience, luck and quick clicking to freeze a story with that background. I have chosen a few shots from here and there to show what all this means for me.

This was a band in Paris, under the Tour Eiffel. There was enough movement among the players, and a background of steel, horizontal and vertical. I developed the picture at a slightly warmer temperature to give additional grain and fuzziness to the movement.

Atop the Table Mountain in Cape town, South Africa, a tourist was taking a picture of her travel companion. The clothing lines were smooth and appropriate for a B&W shot. But the background was just perfect for texture and contrast. The story would have been lost if they were facing the ocean. I still wonder, however, if she was smiling.

This one from Porto, Portugal. I liked the graffiti and the lines of the setting (horizontal, vertical, strait, curves, smooth, rough, etc). I stayed there for a long while waiting for someone to walk into the picture with a story. But that day no one walked by. So, I took a picture of the background to remind me that there was no story in that picture! It is said that a street photographer follows the same strategies as a hunter, and that often comes back home empty handed.

Sometimes simple lines capture a 3-D feeling most appropriately. This one from Prague, Czech Republic. I think the story would have been different if the priest had a straight posture like the soldier, as everything else is in cold squares, rectangles and vertical lines.

A simple gathering of teenage girls is most un-telling for a picture. But when they look at their shoes with different body languages, it makes it worthwhile to frame. A waist-level camera, in this case a Mamiya 645 1000s, can be very helpful for such quick shots. This one from Baltimore, Maryland.

I liked the brick wall, the arch and the columns as background to the art-deco shape of the bench. Yet, I needed a subject in front of them! This was in Taipei, at the National Taiwan University campus. I passed by that spot a few times, between classes during the afternoon, but could not get a picture. Just as I was about to leave for the day, this woman walked slowly toward the bench. It was a clear day but she had an umbrella- so I had to wait and see what she was up to. She took her shoes off, parked the umbrella just so, and assumed an visibly uncomfortable posture for a person in need of rest. I then realized that the bench had very short backs, and only on each side. The symmetrical lines of her posture were in perfect harmony with the background. Sometimes art-deco may not lead to comfort!

Finally a picture from Vienna, Austria. A night shot with a 1948 Canon B-II rangefinder and a 50mm 1.9 Serenar collapsible lens, wide open. One can guess what the man may be thinking, but the expression on the woman's face remains enigmatic. The wide-open lens gave the softness and very shallow depth-of-field to the background making it more fantasy-like.

December 24, 2013
©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013