Aug

Photo Journalism

Photo Journalism is a very popular photographic subject. I know this because the Royal Photographic Society has a group for people who enjoy it and also because a friend of mine in the Reigate Photographic Society runs a similar group for the Surrey Photographic Association and this is well over-subscribed.

As a holiday project and as a complete change to my project on the classical architecture of John Nash, I decided to make Urban culture the subject of my next project. Places in London that came to mind, included Covent Garden, Playstation Skate Park, Camden Market and Brick Lane.

Before I went, I asked my friend who runs the Photojournalist group for some shooting tips (he is one of the best pro shooters of all time by the way – ex Fleet Street) and I pass these on in case they are helpful.

The key thing, as with wildlife photography and many other subject is not to go chasing around but to take up a position, be patient and let the subjects come to you. With luck, as you were there first, you will be part of the scenery and they won’t even notice you. But you do need to be ready to shoot from the hip if necessary. So the lens cap must be off, use a wide angle lens if you can, have the aperture wide open, increase the ISO a bit if required and make sure that the shutter speed is 1/250 sec maximum.

It is amazing fun and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I am doing. It is early days yet and I will hopefully post some more shots in the gallery as time goes by. Several new shots have been added to the gallery today in most of the categories by the way, so please have a look.

Please drop me a line with your experiences and maybe we can use some of your favourite locations on the goodphotolocations.com site.