Master of Street Photography Berlin Version. In this post, I will share with you my street photos from Berlin. Berlin is a metropolitan city in the middle of Europe with all the stories. Full of attractions, beautiful architectural buildings, and recently full of street art.
Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents[1] within public places. Although there is a difference between street and candid photography, it is usually subtle with most street photography being candid in nature and some candid photography being classifiable as street photography. 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 of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic.
The street photographer can be seen as an extension of the flâneur, an observer of the streets (who was often a writer or artist).
Framing and timing can be key aspects of the craft with the aim of some street photography being to create images at a decisive or poignant moment.
Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history. This motivation entails having also to navigate or negotiate changing expectations and laws of privacy, security and property. In this respect the street photographer is similar to social documentary photographers or photojournalists who also work in public places, but with the aim of capturing newsworthy events; any of these photographers’ images may capture people and property visible within or from public places. The existence of services like Google Street View, recording public space at a massive scale, and the burgeoning trend of self-photography (selfies), further complicate ethical issues reflected in attitudes to street photography.
However, street photography does not need to exclusively feature people within the frame. It can also focus on traces left by humanity that say something about life. Photographers such as William Eggleston often produce street photography where there are no people in the frame, but their presence is suggested by the subject matter.
Much of what is regarded, stylistically and subjectively, as definitive street photography was made in the era spanning the end of the 19th century[5] through to the late 1970s, a period which saw the emergence of portable cameras that enabled candid photography in public places.
Most kinds of portable camera are used for street photography; for example rangefinders, digital and film SLRs, and point-and-shoot cameras.
The commonly used 35 mm full-frame format focal lengths of 28 mm to 50 mm, are used particularly for their angle of view and increased depth of field, with wide-angle lenses potentially permitting a candid close approach to the human subjects without their suspecting they are in the frame. However, there are no exclusions as to what might be used.
Two commonly used alternative focusing techniques are zone focusing and hyperfocal distance, either to free the photographer from manual-focus; or where autofocus is too slow, or the photographer cannot be sure the focus point will fall where the photographer chooses to place their subject in a quickly changing situation; and which also facilitate shooting “from the hip” i.e. without bringing the camera up to the eye.
With zone focusing, the photographer chooses to set the focus to a specific distance, knowing that a certain area in front of and beyond that point will be in focus. The photographer only has to remember to keep their subject between those set distances.
The hyperfocal distance technique makes as much as possible acceptably sharp so that the photographer is freed up even further, from not having to consider the subject’s distance, other than not being too close. The photographer sets the focus to a fixed point particular to the lens focal length, and the chosen aperture, and in the case of digital cameras their crop factor. Thus everything from a specific distance (that will typically be close to the camera), all the way to infinity, will be acceptably sharp. The wider the focal length of the lens (i.e. 28 mm), and the smaller the aperture it is set to (i.e. f/11), and with digital cameras the smaller their crop factor, the closer to the camera is the point at which starts to become acceptably sharp.
Alternatively waist-level finders and the articulating screens of some digital cameras allow for composing, or adjusting focus, without bringing the camera up to the eye and drawing unwanted attention to the photographer.
Anticipation plays a role where a relevant or ironic background that might act as a foil to a foreground incident or passer-by is carefully framed beforehand; it was a strategy much used for early street photographs, most famously in Cartier-Bresson’s figure leaping across a puddle in front of a dance poster in Place de l’Europe, Gare Saint Lazare, 1932. more…
IT IS NOT LIKE JOINING SOME BIG CORPORATION
Team Oberman can be found on the lower ground floor of the New York office, right next to that of Michael Bierut, the longest-serving US partner. But the partners all sit together, in a line of desks that stretches down the left-hand side of the office’s first floor. From the waiting area, visitors come face-to-face with perhaps the most concentrated stretch of graphic design talent to be found anywhere in the world. It is an unusual arrangement, and while Michael and Emily can call straight down to their teams, other partners have to go upstairs to the upper floor to discuss their projects’ progress.
This building though was never designed to be a studio – it started life as a bank, became a clothing store and later a nightclub called MK, which Michael Bierut recalls as being themed around the idea of an illicit house party of a louche South American playboy who’s magnate father was away. Michael, it must be said, has an extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the New York nightclub scene of the 1980s and 90s.
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
The first time Luke was interviewed as a potential partner he was actually turned down – “I was too nervous or too needy” – but he was accepted second time around, fresh off his huge success redesigning New York magazine “I was funnier and I think that really matters”. Now he describes the interaction between the partners when they all get together as “a little chaotic, a little dysfunctional.”
Street photography in Berlin, Germany
What are the best locations for street photography in Berlin? The amazing Berlin photo spots? The cool Instagram places in Berlin?
List of street photographers
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
- Jun Abe (1955–)
- Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)
- Christophe Agou (1969–2015)
- Richard Bram (1952–)
- Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993)
- Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902–2002)
- Blake Andrews (1968–)
- Emmy Andriesse (1914–1953)
- Nobuyoshi Araki (1940–)
- Diane Arbus (1923–1971)
- Eugène Atget (1857–1927)
- Alice Austen (1866–1952)
- Narelle Autio (1969–)
- Shirley Baker (1932–2014)
- James Barnor (1929–)
- Ruth-Marion Baruch (1922–1997)
- Gianni Berengo Gardin (1930–)
- Lou Bernstein (1911–2005)
- Valentine Blanchard (1831–1901)
- Dorothy Bohm (1924–)
- Boogie (1969–)
- David Bradford (1951–)
- Adrian Bradshaw
- Bill Brandt (1904–1983)
- Brassaï (1899–1984)
- Giacomo Brunelli (1977–)
- Harry Callahan (1912–1999)
- Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004)
- Mark Cohen (1943–)
- Joan Colom (1921–)
- Martha Cooper (1943–)
- Ted Croner (1922–2005)
- Bill Cunningham (1929–2016)
- Maciej Dakowicz (1976–)
- Bill Dane (1938–)
- Bruce Davidson (1933–)
- Peter Dench (1972–)
- Raymond Depardon (1942–)
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1951–)
- Robert Doisneau (1912–1994)
- Ken Domon (1909–1990)
- Don Donaghy (1936–2008)
- Terence Donovan (1936–1996)
- Eamonn Doyle (1969–)
- Carolyn Drake (1971–)
- Nikos Economopoulos (1953–)
- William Eggleston (1939–)
- Martin Elkort (1929–2016)
- Ed van der Elsken (1925–1990)
- Morris Engel (1918–2005)
- Elliott Erwitt (1928–)
- Walker Evans (1903–1975)
- Louis Faurer (1916–2001)
- Harold Feinstein (1931–2015)
- Robert Frank (1924–)
- Jill Freedman (1939–)
- Lee Friedlander (1934–)
- Cristina García Rodero
- William Gedney (1932–1989)
- George Georgiou (1961–)
- David Gibson (1957–)
- Bruce Gilden (1946–)
- Shigeo Gochō (1946–1983)
- Henry Grant (1907–2004)
- Ken Grant (1967–)