Street photography without pissing people off?

[Two23]

Here's a great video showing how to do it right.




Kent in SD

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Gilden is pretty obnoxious. Not for me.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Here's a great video showing how to do it right.




Kent in SD

Gilden is pretty obnoxious. Not for me.

Ditto

 

[NB23]

This is a misconception, a lot of people mistake street photography with the in-your-face kind of photography.
The Gilden style, trying to catch the hot-dog eating folks right in the act... that particular style is a sub-sub-sub-sub-genre just as “liking music” does not necessarily mean “liking Rap music”. Also, there are the people with lack of imagination that simply try to replicate this style, as if it was the only one just because they saw it.

Street photo can be poetic, calm, passive, and still strongly reasonate.

 

[StevieB]

This is a misconception, a lot of people mistake street photography with the in-your-face kind of photography.
The Gilden style, trying to catch the hot-dog eating folks right in the act... that particular style is a sub-sub-sub-sub-genre just as “liking music” does not necessarily mean “liking Rap music”. Also, there are the people with lack of imagination that simply try to replicate this style, as if it was the only one just because they saw it.

Street photo can be poetic, calm, passive, and still strongly reasonate.

The same can be said of any type of photography, it is all derivative and not really much that is more than replicating.
It won't be long now that we will see someone on the street photographing a person in a bathtub full of milk
some people will say "this is great, I've never seen anything like it!" and others will roll their eyes and say nothing.

 

[cliveh]

Ditto

Agree, this is offensive and note he is not doing this to a man, but someone weaker than himself.

 

[Arthurwg]

Helps to work quickly.

 

[logan2z]

Ditto

I'm not sure who's creepier, Gilden or this guy...

 

[Sirius Glass]

I'm not sure who's creepier, Gilden or this guy...

Either are ghoulish.

 

[KerrKid]

Grab their camera and toss it down the street.

 

[snusmumriken]

I'm not sure who's creepier, Gilden or this guy...

I suppose the justification for this in-your-face approach would be in the photos. Have to say, I’m unimpressed by either of them. I’m especially unimpressed by Cohen justifying a creepy photo of a girl’s legs by finding features in the print that he didn’t know were there at the time. For me, these two photographers make a good case for an approach in which the subject remains unaware.

 

[cliveh]

Here's a great video showing how to do it right.




Kent in SD

I find this type of photography completely offensive and any person who behaves like that is not a photographer, but someone who is committing an crime on human privacy.

 

[McDiesel]

If you want to be like Gilden but without the drama, you can get pretty far with an iPhone pretending to be making selfies. I've tried, this works really well. You can be standing 2 feet away from someone and fill up the frame with their face without them knowing, noticing, caring or objecting. You quickly get bored of it.

@cliveh I feel you, but it's naive to expect any privacy on the street.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I find this type of photography completely offensive and any person who behaves like that is not a photographer, but someone who is committing an crime on human privacy.

And invading personal space. People like that give photographers a bad name.

 

[NightPix]

Read and tried enough things here and there. Tell me how do you take photos of complete strangers on the street without pissing people off, or how to blend in a way that they don't even notice you. Especially using a wider angle lens. For me, 8 out of 10 times I'll get the cold stare, or, they have that look in the eye which I know if I take a photo of them they're gonna go crazy on you. So my question is, how do you stick a camera in someones face without them picking a fight with you?

I have the same question. I’ve tried using small camera/lens combos and shooting from the hip. I still get more than a few annoyed looks.