To find extraordinary things, take your time!

I've always been a little afraid of street photography. Or rather: people in the street photography. Portraits of people, the not-dressed-up-and-scheduled-photoshoot-ones, portraits where you try to capture people just as they are, that's the new challenge we have set ourselves. 

Greatly inspired by Brandon Stanton, the inventor and driving force behind Humans of New York, we decided to start Humans of the Nordic Region. Seen as Humans of Sweden was already taken and Humans of Jämtland somehow felt a bit too limited, we named it after Norden. The Nordic Region comprises of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. 

With all the preparations done, there was still the tiny little hurdle of actually getting started. But you know what? It's just like pitching that great business idea: believe in yourself, believe in the idea and know what you want to achieve, there's your elevator pitch for you.  

New York of course has streets aplenty. Here in our immediate surroundings, streets are a little harder to come by. So we expanded street photography with photography in the natural surroundings. Just taking a stroll here on our hometurf, had me bumping into Roger the gardener, Rödöns most flexible entrepreneur and the great couple that lives in one of the most beautiful houses around. 

And you know what? Once I decided I really wanted to get going with this awesome photoproject, my fear was gone. I used the 24-70 and went out to talk to Roger. He was all ears and wanted to take part. It was a cloudy day, so I put the WB on Shade and I mostly shot at f5.6, 1/160 and ISO200. 

I have to bear in mind though, that I need to give myself - and the people I'm taking photos of - more time. More time for the right pose, more time to relax, more time to coax them into telling me a bit more about what's going on with them. Just a couple of lines to take the viewer even deeper into your image, gives the image even more power I find. 

I can't wait to go out again. I'll probably relive that anxious feeling when I'm about to approach my first person, but I've decided that I just have to go out there and venture. I know what I want, I've got what it takes and we've got this great big catalogue of beautiful Nordic portraits to create! 

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To find extraordinary things, go to the ordinary streets

One of the advantages of living in or a near a city is the tons of possibilities you have for doing great street photography.  

According to Wikipedia, street photography is "photography that features the chance encounters and random accidents within public places. Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic."

Having said that, it would of course be awesome to start out with street photography in a city like New York, London or for example Amsterdam. You and your camera would hardly be noticed because there's just so much going on in the streets. Living in Jämtland, made us try our hand at street photography in the less busy and bustling but still fabulously great city of Trondheim. 

Where it's an abundance of photographic opportunities in bigger cities, where we're living right now just have to be a bit more patient. Be patient and the situations will present themselves. 

People are awesome photography subject, but street photography does not only entail shooting images of people, exactly like it says in Wikipedia. Here's some examples of street photography where it's not the actual human being being the main character. 

                                  

Keep an eye out, be patient and look for great photo situations. 

 

And when it comes to post processing, you'll be facing the choice of using colour or B/W in your images. Go out there and experiment. Be open and observant and the photographic opportunities will come. 

If you want some more inspiration, do check out these guys (and girl). Eric Kim, Zack Arias, Thomas Leudhart, Marius Vieth, Nicholas Goodden and Valerie Jardin

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Life without colour. How to create stunning B/W images.

I guess it's a question of taste. And of what I got used to over the years. Most of my work I've done in colour. For me it's the colours that speak out in an image. The colours that draw you towards or even into an image. 

But recently I've started to see the fun and the beauty in black and white images. I still think it tricky to decide when to go black and white though. In our recent trip to Trondheim, I tried my hand at street photography, mainly to see how this would turn out in black and white. 

Street photography is a whole different ballgame and an artform in itself. This is one of the pictures I took in Trondheim, it's ok, but it's definately not eye-popping. Actually kinda boring. 

Just to get started I cropped it using Lightroom and did some small adjustments. Then I edited it in Tonality (mac only) and voila! A whole new picture, now the people in the picture came to life! Gone is the dull grey and brownness of the colour version! 

I love Tonality for converting images to black and white. And I think it's really cool that it has the possibility to work with layers. For those of you not too familiar with Tonality, I'll write a tutorial some time soon! 

Tonality has a good compatibility with Lightroom. So when you're done in Tonality, you can edit it even more in Lightroom. Another option is to use Silver Efex Pro to convert your images to black and white. And ofcourse you can also do it without a plugin and just use Lightroom to make an awesome black and white image. 

The end result is a picture with more focus on the main subject and the boring colors are gone. Impact is a lot bigger now.

But still: when to go from colour to black and white? The day I tried my hand at street photography it was a cloudy day. And this works actually really well for black and white. Check out some more examples of my day in Trondheim: 

The key to a stunning black and white image is the contrast and variation in black and white. Black and white is more than just two colours in your picture. Black and white is contrast, sharpness and different shades of black and white. Here's another example from Trondheim:  

 

I loved the reflection on the ground but this didn't work in the colour version of the image. Again, it was a dull image with no depth or atmosphere. When going black and white, the reflection that caught my eye in the first place, really popped out. And the whole atmosphere in the picture now reflected what I first felt when taking the shot. 

So bottomline is: go black and white for a reason. Don't cheat yourself with going black and white because you think black and white solves all that doesn't work in the colour version. This video of Serge Ramelli. has been a great inspiration to me for starting (again) with black and white. I love the way Serge explains things.

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