Thread 4456713

How do I get over the fear of using my camera in public? I got a fancy camera but I've never taken any shots with it because I'm too scared to go outside with it and use it

Maybe mention the thoughts that accompany your fear, so we have something to go on.

Theft, damage, or just social anxiety?
If the latter, start with landmarks, tourist hotspots, or landscapes. Never be a street creep.

>>4456713 (OP)
To do street photography (ie. you're taking pictures of strangers in public):
As with everything else in life, follow these rules:
1. Be attractive.
2. Don't be unattractive.
This will get you much farther than any other advice.
Go get a haircut, wear normal and well-fitting clothing, stop saying weird shit, practice your smile in the mirror before every time you go out. You don't gotta be Chad-tier, but people should feel positive when they see you.

Then, stop giving a fuck. Just take the pictures you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQlTE-gREHw

>>4456736
Well said. Couldn't be better advice. The halo effect is very real and it can work for you, too. Getting /fit/ should be top priority. Every hobby can be made better by being in shape and being pleasant to be around.

>>4456713 (OP)
Assuming this is about social anxiety bass fear consider this thought experiment. For all of the people I've ever seen in public taking pictures, I sure can't remember basically all of them.
You might think you'll be seen by lots of people in public and forever burned into their mind as a weirdo camera guy.
The reality is that you might be noticed in the moment, but you'll be forgotten within minutes.
Just think back to all the camera people you've seen in the wild, and even as someone with an interest in cameras or photography, how long did they really keep in your thoughts? I bet their mostly all forgotten, just like you would be.

>>4456736
>I have to be pretty like a woman

wew shiggydiggy

OP just think of it like this. Eventually you are going to get old and lose all your positive characteristics and fucking die anyway. You've already been alive for some piece of time and you probably haven't recorded most of it. Just treat taking photos like a totem that ties you to the idea that you are here, you are experiencing things, things are happening

Stop being a bitch

>>4456765
>t. dyel

>>4456713 (OP)
put some airpods in and listen to something

>>4456713 (OP)
Just travel. Unironically, it's way easier to do when you're clearly a tourist in a foreign country. While it may feel a bit awkward at home.

Unless maybe you are taking close up photos of people, no one cares. Turn off the AF beep and AF light, and in a tight space, use the silent (electronic) shutter. When we go out with my wife, I take photos of her eating, and she does not notice.

every thread on this dumb board is repeated on a bimonthly cycle
answer is the same as the last ten times

If you're not being an asshole, most people won't mind. If they say something about it, you can always delete the photo for them.

>delete the jpg
>I have the raws anyway
DEVILISH

>>4456713 (OP)
Something I learned a while back is if you're taking street photos, pretend like you're photographing something behind all the people. They'll just figure you're a tourist and pay you no mind within a second of seeing you looking off into the background.

>>4456713 (OP)
Carry pepper spray.

>>4456713 (OP)
be 6'2
have muscles

>>4456713 (OP)
I just bought this tiny p&s that fits in my pocket. When I see something I want to take a photo of, I kind of frame it in my mind first, walk to where I think the correct perspective is going to be, take it out of my pocket, snap, then put it straight back in my pocket and get on my way.
Also >>4456798 zhis. People won't give a shit if they see a random tourist snapping some photos. It's a different story if you're carrying a camera bag and two bodies with giga bbc 24-120 lenses. You'll stand out and you'll likely look like an autist. But if you're 6'4 and ripped, just go for it anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>4456809

this

OP quit being a faggot and have some fucking balls, whats the worst thing someone will do? You'll never see these people again and unless you live around niggers you have nothing to worry about.

>>4456736
>>2. Don't be unattractive.
Look at this lookist faggot.

Bruce Gilden is ugly yet he mogs every street photographer. He is a bad ass.
Winogrand was a fat awkward manlet.

>>4457165
(((Gilden)))s photos are staged

>>4457166
Good

>>4456736
how do i make the cops ignore me

>>4457234
what the fuck are you doing with your camera that’s so suss the cops are watching you?

>>4457234
Stay away from pools, schools and kindergartens probably.

>>4456713 (OP)
Use a flash and directly flash people in the face and yell out "you look cool" then run away

>>4457468
I watched a youtube video the other day where the "street photographer" fag was doing more or less that.

>>4457468
No need to run if you have your pepper spray out. Doesn't count as brandishing a weapon. Teehee

>>4457264
i live in america and some areas have had post-9/11 "a guy with a camera! call the cops!" scare going on for 24 years now

>>4457511
I don’t understand. Did they blow up the WTC with a DSLR and an SD card full of the backs of people’s head?

>>4457511
Has there been a genuinely more mindbreaking even than 9/11?

>>4457517
>I don’t understand.
Americans are mostly retards. It's rather straightforward

>>4457517
There's a weird cultural phenomenon where Americans will consider any complicated piece of technology as 'looking like a bomb'.

I'm not really even sure where it comes from, I don't think most people have ever even seen what a real bomb looks like.

>>4457532
>>4457511
even more generally, i think americans are suspicious and cynical about someone doing literally anything they don't instantly understand. one time i was strolling around a quiet residential block waiting for a gig to start around dusk, and snapping some front yard gardens and cars in the evening light. a neighbor came over and kinda aggressively asked what i was doing.
i think it's a combination of their personal experience data set of people doing something unknown almost always with ill intent, and very weak arts and culture education/community. in their minds, it's literally more likely that someone using a camera near them is out to *get* them somehow than that they are simply doing a creative activity. and depending on their social circles, it could indeed be the case that there are more scammers and crooks than hobbyists and artists

>>4457264
have you heard of cops before? they don't exactly need a legitimate reason to harass people

>>4457542
If they had any consistent logic, they'd be attacking Google street view vans.

>>4457542
>snapping some front yard gardens and cars
You were intruding into what people consider their private space, so don't be surprized.

>>4457511
lmao that's what you'd expect to happen in a backward thirdie dictatorship like NK or Iran or whatever shithistan.
Grim.

>>4457528
Covid, easily.

>>4456713 (OP)
i had this feeling too - i take my camera out in DTLA / SF and i always make sure i am aware of my surroundings- i've had every bicycle i've owned stolen but luckily i still have my camera

>>4457532
can confirm i was stopped by TSA for a condenser microphone

>>4457542
Photography isn't considered art by most of the world. At the most a normal person who has never listened to a jewish professor speak thinks photography is art if it involves portraiture, set design, traveling to specific locations, shooting city scenes, etc. Not snapping shit in their urban front lawn like an HOA inspector.

Intrusive, disrespectful photography like that, taken without permission, is distinctly jewish culture. Its founders are all jews. Its big names are all jews. Its exhibitors are all jews. From winogrand to cohen to gilden, it's an entire genre predicated on disrespecting, harrassing, and mocking non-jews.

>>4457556
No that's what happens in firstie countries like germany, sweden, and singapore.

>>4457593
>Photography isn't considered art by most of the world
Wrong

>>4457616
it is wrong but also no one is mistaking /p/s snapshits of benches and lawn gnomes for art, and most jewstreet really is considered garbage thats only art to a college specific cult

>>4457551
sure, it's natural for them to ask what i'm doing, but the default assumption that we are doing something sinister is really sad. it bums me out both because it sours my mood when i'm just trying to make a neat image and because it speaks to the cutthroat mindset people develop here. it implies that in their experience, strangers have been more often malicious than benign. that they always need to be on guard.
i myself can't think of any way shooting a garden could harm anyone. i haven't heard any objectors give a hypothetical way it could harm anyone. the closest i've heard is 'oh you look suspicious! people might think you're up to something'. what i could possibly be up to, they won't say. but still these people will treat you with ten times the suspicion i've seen anyone give their smart phone or amazon alexa or any terms and conditions agreement.
>>4457532
can confirm i have no idea what an actual bomb might look like
>>4457594
also grim

>>4456765
>>4456736
Based

>>4456713 (OP)
get your toes wet. You've got take a dive and shove a camera in someones face and pull the shutter.
what you do next is entirely up to you. talk to them. smile/nod at them. ignore them. pretend you were taking a pic of something/someone else.
but the point is, even if you're a gigachad attractive type, you'll still feel shy to take a pic of someone doing something that they're not expecting to be photographed doing.

Only ugly people say "be attractive" because they think its the 'missing link'. Its like the fuji owner who says "if only i had full frame, my photos would be the shit" or a Sony user who says "if i had a leica, i'd be famous".

just excuses.

There's no substitute for overcoming the bone crippling anxiety associated with photographing strangers than just pulling the damn trigger.
and you'll do it, and you'll see your pics, and hate them. they'll suck. because they're not frame right, or they're not close enough. and sooner or later, you'll start to hone in on each little area of improvement.

Before long, (or maybe a super long time, who knows), you'll be gliding over to take people's pics like some social butterfly, or violently shoving a camera in peoples' face to get the shot you want.

Your style will be your style. how you get there is up to you. Just do what you have to do. pull the fucking trigger at people.

>>4457550
yeah but they don't. this is the stupidity of humans. they'll harass a 20 year old with a massive DSLR who is not hiding the fact he/she is taking a photo, but not worry about the guy jerkin' his gherkin' to you on CCTV to pass his time.

people are idiots.

>>4456717
theft
i live in a third world city

>>4458931
Phoenix?

>>4458930
It's just the spectrum of the city: being openly obnoxious vs being openly hostile. City people go insane and swing one direction or the other.

>>4458933
Lol I shoot street in Phoenix all the time and it's fine. The homeless will yell at you but there's not really much theft

>>4456713 (OP)
If that fancy camera you have is a nikon z8 or some big ass shit then sell it and get yourself a nice compact body like the snoy a6700/a7c2 or some fujis. big ass fancy cameras are unironically bad for street photography especially if you're an inexperienced introvert because it puts huge pressure on you and make the subjects view you as a threat. People just generally don't like having some big ass fancy cameras shoved in their faces. Dont get leicas either people will think you're a faggot

If you're not filling the frame at 20mm then you aren't close enough.

Seriously, go shoot a motorsports event. Doesn't have to be Bonneville, but it's a start, these people are used to having cameras in their faces. They aren't going to give you any shit and if you're like me they will ask you for a copy afterward, I have like 10 drivers I have to send pictures off to, all paid work.

You don't even need a press pass. Just show up, what's the worst that's going to happen? You mean to tell me a fat sweaty ham planet standing out in the 105*F desert with 4 cameras orbiting his fuckin gut is going to out-street all of 4chan? There aren't even any streets out there.

Just get out and do it, you don't need to be attractive that's bullshit, you think Henri Cartier-Bresson was knocking down broads with his Leica III? Shit, the classics did it and you can do, shit's not hard.

Theft? Stay out of brown town. Social anxiety? What are they going to do, dox you and call your employer and get you fired? Call the police? You're protected under the 1st Amendment, tell them to suck your dick. Are there any signs saying you can't take pictures? Fuck em! Damage? Speak softly and carry a bigger stick. Wear a strap, don't be a tourist.

You got this OP, get out there and do it.

>>4459847

that's definitely some shit a gearfag would say, I know 5 gearfags on this board and I'm like 3 of them.

equipment isn't going to help, the classics all shot on Leica IIIs full mechanical, film and slow f3.5 50mm lenses, maybe an f2.8 35mm. if equipment is your limitation then just use your cell phone camera. you can't buy your way into talent.

Imagine not really working for any christians at the moment, and not needing to outperform a ham planet at that ham planet's people's event

for some reason, i hate it when people take pictures, so i take spite pictures of them

>>4459987
That man is more content with the world than you'll ever be

>>4459995
It was a pretty view with the sun begining to show through the rain, but I was being dragged along on a walk.

>>4459941
Cinefag tier post. Makes me wonder if you're him after all, but he cropped really tight so maybe not. I will still be looking for the cropped laughing mouth in your photos nevertheless.

How about this technique
>enable silent mode
>see your subject appeoaching
>point your camera, not at them, but at a backdrop you expect your subject to cross in front of you momentarily
>pretend to be shooting or adjusting camera
>actually take the photo when subject is in your frame
>hold your camera at that position for slightly longer until the subject has passed far enough
It makes it look like you're not actually photographing them but something else in the background

>>4456713 (OP)
Try holding the camera at your waist with a flippy screen and shoot from there. They'll think you're just looking down at something.

>>4456713 (OP)
Just don't go to places with brown people

>>4462071
Kind of a cop out, and reduces the ability to get a good shot. Can't react to a good moment, can't line something up on purpose without relying on the subject to be predictable.
The real hot tip is learn how to fight.