http://youtu.be/jb2n_zTgaU8
KAWAII PUPPY XOXO.
Apparently, I’m totally not bothered by people messing up my shots unless they are messing up a shot of a cute puppy. However, I was more taken aback by someone sitting right in front of me while I was already crouched on the pavement.
Filming aside, you shouldn’t block someone’s view of a puppy.
Later on, I was so enthusiastic as I biked to catch up to a cyclist with a large kayak attached to a trailer that he was a bit confused, and while I was patiently waiting for him to bike across the road and cross the frame in a shot I was setting up, he stopped and waited. I thought he was maybe waiting for cars to pass, but eventually he got off his bike. While my enthusiasm/strangeness hadn’t upset him, he had different expectations regarding the photographic procedure and ethics, and I had a really great conversation with him about contemporary street photography- I’m absolutely sure that Scott Schuman the Sartorialist is really great at making eye contact and giving a slight nod to convey his respect and photographic intent to certain kinds of older men in candid situations, but I am making motion pictures, and I was concerned with a type of screen-clearing movement, and not a detailed portrait. In a few years when we’re all wearing google glass or some variant, I could invisibly tag people with art links that also includes an opt-in commercial photo release that pops up when they get home.
I will re-examine some of my methods when engaging in these more voyeuristic shots. It might just be the Hemingway safari books (it is) but his passages about hunting elusive prey are sometimes relevant to the making of the Street Style videos. I should probably ditch the hunting/filming metaphors. On occasion, there has been a very stylish person having a phone conversation, and I will trail them from a distance for up to three blocks hoping they will end their conversation. After three blocks if they are still talking I will bike ahead of them and set up six or more blocks down the street. That way, I am still looking for street style but might get another chance to photograph the intended subject. So I might reduce that to following for one block and then setting up four or five blocks down the street. Gotta set the regulations.