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Aspect Ratio, Composition, Present and FuturePhotography is simply a technology that allows you to record a moment in time, in a box that simply captures a moment of light. Simple and basic as that, no myth there.
But the decision on how to capture that moment and its variables like composition, time and subject matter remain in the hands of photographer.
Let's talk about that box, how it affects composition, and the time we live in. Photographic technology has developed at a rapid pace. From the 19th century's cumbersome daguerreotypes to today's compact digital cameras, photography has become one of the most accessible art mediums, but more related to motion pictures that we might think, being at the same time influence and influenced by each other.
4:3 (1.33)
The original aspect ratio used by the motion picture was industry was 4:3, or ratio down to 1.33:1, or just 1.33. Theories why vary from from Euclid's famous Greek "Golden Section", a shape of approximately 1.6, to a shape that simply saved m

Matt WeberMatt Weber shots his way through life.
Started out as a taxi driver and saw so many things on the streets that he kept saying "If only I had a camera…" A camera seemed like the only way to capture the crazy stuff which was happening almost every night.
Claims that the 70's were more interesting than the 80's, but in December 1984 bought a competitive camera, an AE-1 and a 50mm lens.
Started out in color film, but one year after he turned to b/w, because color was tricky to develop.
Thinks that failure is important, and that failing over 99% of the time and not giving up is something to be proud of. Takes "awful pictures on a daily basis and always will. There aren't too many other types of photography where that's the expected result."
Suffered from the photographic equivalent of "Writer's Block" for many years and it would be the crazy decision to spend most of my savings on a pair of M6′s and a few lenses that helped him to comeback. "The 28mm & 35mm lenses are the perfec

Rui Palha - Head, Eye and HeartAs you know, I normally don't do (features) Journals.
The exception goes to those photographers that had some historical importance in the photography World, those that influence(d) me, those that I believe can move others like they moved me, humanitarian photographers, and that normally live in the "shadow" of the same old Features and references.
Today I have the pleasure and honor to bring you Rui Palha.
Talented photographer and a really good person.
There is little information about Rui Palha. We know that he was born in 1953, is Portuguese, lives in Lisbon, and considers himself an amateur. Well, if all amateurs photographed as Rui, the World would not need professionals.
Photography is his hobby since he was 14 years of age. Had his own darkroom, but preferred to "press the button" in the streets.
The sentence that defines his photography: "Photography is a very important part of my space… it is to discover, it is to capture giving flow to what the heart feels and sees i

Margaret Bourke-WhiteAs you know, I normally don't do (features) Journals.
The exception goes to those photographers that had some historical importance in the photography World, those that influence(d) me, those that I believe can move others like they moved me, humanitarian photographers, and that normally live in the "shadow" of the same old Features and references.
Meet Margaret Bourke-White.
Margaret Bourke-White was born in the Bronx, New York, in June 1904.
She was an documentary photographer and a pioneer.
She is best known as the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union (1930), the first female war correspondent, the first female permitted to work in combat zones, the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover, and the first female photographer of Fortune magazine.
In July 22, 1941, when the first bombs fell in Moscow, she was the only foreign photographer on site. It was the biggest scoop. For h

Street Photography: To Lo And Behold!Street Photography Quiz:
When was the last time a random passenger in a bus made your jaw drop?
Happens with me all the time!
Whenever I go out into the streets, I never plan on what I'm going to shoot, nor do I have a particular theme in mind.
Mind you, planning ahead is highly benefical to a Street Photographer or any photographer for that matter - a practice that almost always yeilds excellent results when properly utilized.
For me, it's just the sheer excitment of stepping into a vast concrete jungle, unsure about what's around the next corner, or perceiving an event that is about to unfold before you, the sound of your heart beating as you walk/run towards the developing scene - all the while hoping that you get there in time to take... that one shot, that ultimate payoff; is all that matters.
Sometimes you could be standing there observing a street scene when you begin to notice things falling into place; a photo opportunity forming right before your very eyes.
Beli

Josef KoudelkaAs you know, I normally don't do (features) Journals.
The exception goes to those photographers that had some historical importance in the photography World, those that influence(d) me, those that I believe can move others like they moved me, humanitarian photographers, and that normally live in the "shadow" of the same old Features and references.
"The maximum, that is what has always interested me." This is a quote by Josef Koudelka.
He was born in 1938 in Moravia and began photographing with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera.
He staged his first photographic exhibition in 1961. Changed to a Rolleiflex camera and in 1967 decided to give up his career in engineering for full-time work as a photographer.
Awarded several times, was known for his exceptional photographs, which required an enourmous amount of courage.
Nomad at heart, he wandered around Europe with his camera and little else. In 1987 Koudelka became a French citizen and his work received support and acknowledgment from his friend, "

Sebastião Salgado, a living legendAs any boy, I grew up absorving the World. And the World mesmerized me everytime my late dad would bring some journals or magazines where Sebastião Salgado's photos were featured.
I can´t hide the admiration I have for this photographer, this man that is still alive and living in Paris, and the way he changed my way of seeing the World, respecting my fellow man, seeing the light where only darkness seems to exist.
Sebastião Salgado was born on February 8th, 1944 in Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Began his career as a professional photographer in 1973 in Paris, working with the photo agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos until 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado formed Amazonas images, an agency created exclusively for his work.
He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States.
Uses Leica, most of the time he uses 28mm, 35mm and 60mm lenses (one for each camera body). He use

Akash - The World in Full ColorAs you know, I normally don't do (features) Journals.
The exception goes to those photographers that had some historical importance in the photography World, those that influence(d) me, those that I believe can move others like they moved me, humanitarian photographers, and that normally live in the "shadow" of the same old Features and references.
"And Now for Something Completely Different". Monty Python's catch phrase never made more sense because today I bring you the full splendor of rgb, by Akash.
Akash, born in 1977, has received more than 60 international awards from all around the world and his work has been featured in over 50 major international publications including: National Geographic, Vogue, Time, Sunday Times, Newsweek, Geo, Stern,Der Spiegel, The Fader,Brand Ein, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Colors, The Economist, The New Internationalist, Kontinente, Amnesty Journal, Courier International, PDN, Die Zeit, Days Japan, Hello, and Sunday Telegraph of London. In 2002 he be

Rinzi RuizBack!... in Black.

Hopping you entered 2013 the best way possible, and wishing you all a Happy New Year, let's get down to pixels.
Today I bring you Rinzi Ruiz.
He is a Los Angeles based photographer who picked up a camera only 2 years ago (I can relate

) Known to find beauty in humanity and in capturing the emotion, the mundane, and the art in reality that is found everywhere, without ignoring the fact that he has a background in fine arts and graphic design (but photography is "much more fun and rewarding").
He is a phenomenal black & white street photographer, a light painter and a user of profound dark shadows and light reflections.
He is currently shooting with his first DSLR, a Nikon D90, and a Fujifilm X100 (because he got physically tired of carrying the bag), and shoots mostly at about F/5.6 to F/8.
Go check him out.
Note: Do you know what is "Chimping"? It's a syndrome, a bad addiction that runs in the digital photography community, and the ma

Tony Ray-JonesTony Ray-Jones, whose photographic career spanned only one decade, defined a new way of looking at his own society — with irony, nostalgia, compassion and humor. He was prolific in his short 10 years, and his point of view exerted an enormous influence on the development of British documentary art photography from the 1970s through the present.
His photographs are documentary, almost anthropological by nature, and make keen observations on contemporary British society.
"Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is, but I also think that perhaps it is possible to walk like Alice, through a looking-glass, and find another kind of world with the camera."

Ruth OrkinOrkin grew up in Hollywood where her mother was a silent-film actress and in 1939 she studied photojournalism. At the age of 10 she received her first camera, a 39 cent Univex, and two years later Orkin began to develop her photographs herself, and when she was eighteen she made national headlines when she rode a bicycle from Los Angeles to New York for the 1939 World's Fair. Of course she photographed along the way.
In 1943 she moved to New York and began working as a nightclub photographer

and shot baby pictures by day to buy her first professional camera.
She later became a successful freelance photographer, traveling all over the world and contributing to Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal and other periodicals.
Orkin is best known for her naturalistic urban portrayals of Europeans and New Yorkers in the '40s, '50s and '60s, and for a series of photos she took from her New York City apartment with a view of Central Park (A World Through My Window, 1978 and More Pictures

Jason Martini - TodayJason Martini is a photographer from Chicago, Illinois.  He took a photography class in high school, 1993, began to study photojournalism in college but quickly changed to another major… and put the film camera down in 1997.  But I always had in mind that wanted to live in a big city, like New York, and take gritty photos. Finally bought a Nikon D40 in 2008.
Always loved the light and shadows game, thinking about it like how he used to develop film and what worked.  Search for interesting characters and watch for scenes to unfold, from the beginning.
Shoot with a Nikon D40 and D300s and usually brings a 17-55mm 2.8f and a 50mm 1.4f or a 35mm 1.8f.
What he loves most is "the moments that happen so fast my finger hits the shutter before my brain tells me to.  It's like you can't believe your eyes and what's happening in front of them."
About shooting, he says "get close to people".
About editing he takes his time and look at my images over and over

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURESTREET ON DA
dA, as any community on the internet has its pro's and con's. For me the best part of dA has been The Yard Collective #The-Yard-Collective, a group for street photography aficionados of all skill levels from all corners of the world. For the last year I have had the priviledge of leading this group, but as of today this is no longer the case. Instead *NunoCanha is its new Skipper.
Anway, it was a blast and as a tribute to The Yards members as well as to the genre of street photography itself, I below showcase some of my favorite images that belong to the group. (Sorry fellow group admins, only non-admin members only, after all, they are the blood that is being pumped through the groups vains.)

Javier Acenillas - Fearless HumanitarianAs you know, I normally don't do (features) Journals.
The exception goes to those photographers that had some historical importance in the photography World, those that influence(d) me, those that I believe can move others like they moved me, humanitarian photographers, and that normally live in the shadows of the same old Features and references.
So, today I bring you Javier Acenillas. He is a Spanish freelance photographer and a psychologist at the Complutense University of Madrid. He describes himself as a humanist, and develops humanitarian essays.
He has won a number of international prizes, including: The Arts Press Award, Kodak Young Photographer, European Social Fund Grant, Euro Press of Fujifilm, INJUVE, Foto Press Third Prize, Luis Valtueña of Médicos del Mundo, Journalism Doñana´s prize, Luis Ksado, Make History, UNICEF, World Photography of the Year, Fotoevidence, Finalist of the Leica Prize 2009 and Antropography 2010.
He is a member of Gea Photowo

Friday night Street Specials v5.2
A weekly selection amongst the images that were suggested as DDs
or simply impressed me and I think they deserve more attention.
Enjoy them, comment on them and remember to visit the photographers' galleries as well.
If you like what you see, this article
so it can reach as many deviants as possible.

Have a nice weekend!

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Submitted: August 8, 2012

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Decisive Moment vs Moment to Decide

Wed Aug 8, 2012, 2:07 AM

Henri Cartier-Bresson defines "The Decisive Moment" as follows:
"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

However, Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't only take one single photograph when he saw a decisive moment ready to happen (David Hurn refers to this as a "pregnant moment") but rather took several images of the same scene.
That truth is reinforced by the fact that "Gare" is one of only two photographs I know of that Cartier-Bresson cropped. There was a fence off to the left, and he didn't have time to move to the right before it was time to shoot.

You can see the original, un-cropped version in his book, Henri Cartier Bresson: Scrapbook.

If you look carefully at the masters work like Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, or Robert Frank you'll realize that the best of them are snapshots: raw reactions to what they saw before them, not planned intersections with the scene. There's no way HCB's conscious mind could have registered all the elements of the scene in "Behind the Gare St. Lazare" before he hit the shutter.
But experience, doing mental framing in your day-today life, and sticking to one focal focal length are crucial in this part.
And you can compare to the present, when nobody shots only one shot. You capture the moment that caught your attention the best way you can, and then, if you get the chance, you recompose and give it one more try or perspective.

I have no problem in revealing that

was the moment that caught my eye, but I choose the next composition

Getting access to the contact sheets, which are pieces of photographic paper onto which several or all of the negatives on a roll of film have been contact printed, of renowned photographer allows you to see how the decisive moment developed, and how it was selected from a set of images taken at each location.

RUTH ORKIN

WINOGRAND

BRUCE GILDEN

ROBERT FRANK

VIVIAN MAIER

ELLIOT ERWITT

This is not only related to the Masters, the modern street photographers do the same, but it's too early to disclosure this kind of information.

All this does not diminish the merit in any way, but unveils a myth and leads to a very encouraging thought: street photography is not an exact science!
There is no "right" or "wrong" way to shoot street photography, or as Winogrand stated: "There is no special way a photograph should look."
So, the real questions are: am "I" stating humanity, is it within reach, am "I" projecting a message, am "I" capturing people being people? ...

81 Comments

Decisive Moment vs Moment to Decideby *NunoCanha

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~splendidofsun Sep 25, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

very well written, Nuno

*NunoCanha Sep 26, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

~splendidofsun Sep 26, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

~noperson Sep 6, 2012

one tiny correction - "gare" was not cropped

- in all the many books i've seen it in it is the same frame with the trqademark black negative lines around the photograph.

*NunoCanha Sep 7, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Then take a peek at the Magnum releases:
[link]
[link]
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~noperson Sep 7, 2012

oh shit man - this is new! i have been cheated by thames & hudson, schirmer/mosel and a couple others... perhaps by the man himself

but i remember one interview with him i have seen in which he said that because of the bars around the place he was peeking into he didn't even see through the viewfinder cause having pushed the lens behind the metal bars line - the viewfinder contained nothing but blackness

i can let it slip...
makes me think of other things though - like the robert capa's photograph of the spanish soldier being shot - supposedly that's a staged one... and that is possibly his best known one, too...

*NunoCanha Sep 7, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Who knows?
But, for me, the merit in untainted (unless for staged shots, of course).
Little details like that just prove what it is: street! With all the variables!

=EricForFriends Sep 6, 2012 Professional Photographer

It's all luck - but good, experienced and creative photographers are surprisingly more lucky than the next guy.

Great article, Nuno.

*NunoCanha Sep 7, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

I agree with you.
although we must pursuit luck, too

=EricForFriends Sep 7, 2012 Professional Photographer

Yes. Let's get brilliantly lucky!

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