The Beginning of My Street Photo Journey

It's been almost a week since I started my first street photo-journey. It was quite tough at first, since I had to go through many trials and errors. In fact, the most challenging part was when I had to shoot people on the streets. So, I often found myself standing and watching the people and the moments go by. However, when people noticed that I was holding a camera some smiled and some even asked me to take them a photograph. The people were generally kind and friendly. So I then started to have the guts to capture the various moments and events of their lives. At first I was very proud of myself and of my achievements. Unfortunately, my first shots were not really that impressive as I thought it would turn out to be. In fact, I wasn’t able to incorporate the rules of composition and almost all of the photos were just plane dull and lifeless. Therefore, I got really discouraged with my very terrible and awful photographs. However, to think of it now, this experience was just a beginning of my unforgettable photo-journey.

After my first shots I realized that photography isn’t just about capturing the things that we see around, and that it isn’t just about merely going out and taking shots. So my mistakes made me realize the importance of capturing the various emotions and lives of the people. Therefore, good photography is indeed about creating a link between us and the subject we are about to take. And like what many people say, cameras help us build intimate relationship with the things and with the people around us. So for this reason, street photography has also given me an opportunity to become an amateur photojournalist at times. :)

At the end of the day, I continuously learn how to be involved, be fascinated and be patient. However, there are also a lot of hard and tiring moments as well, but it never fails to bring fun, excitement and new learnings. I never thought that street photography would give me such a wonderful experience. And I’m glad that our group has chosen this as our project.

MMS 173: Second F2F 4-24-10

Bad thing, I wasn’t able to attend the first class Photo op at La Mesa Eco Park because of the important things that I had to take care of earlier that morning. However luckily, I was able to attend the afternoon face-to-face session at CICT building at around 1pm. It has been an enjoyable hour-long class with more discussions and activities than what we had before.

We started the afternoon session with few discussions on what the class did during the photo op earlier that morning. And later on, we proceeded to product photography. The class did little experimentation with the miniature studio that Prof. Al managed to create using regular household items. This has been a good illustration on how we can take product photographs right on our very own home.

We also had break in between the whole afternoon session. So during the break our group discussed about our plans on our group project. We had a lot of plans in mind, so our group decided to include them all. And therefore, we have set up new challenges for ourselves. :)

After the break, we proceeded to our first group activity. Here we were given a task to do a very brief and quick presentation of our post-processed pictures to the entire class. Through this activity we were able to see how image manipulation software can become useful sometimes in enhancing our photographs.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate in the night photography at UP Diliman Oblation. Therefore, I am planning to replicate this activity on my own.