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Street photographers have always inspired me but I never
thought it would be possible to take photos of strangers in public because I
want to remain inconspicuous. All this changed when I got an iPhone with an
8 megapixel camera, good enough resolution to make a decent sized print. I
quickly found that I could take photographs of people on the street and on
buses without them noticing. (Everyone is on the phone in public so that we
no longer think about it.) It was an astounding moment, and within two
weeks, I had found my voice as a photographer. Around this time, I also began
experimenting with how color in the photograph changes the viewer’s
perception of the people in the photograph. The colors of the objects in the
photograph compete for the viewer’s attention. When the color is removed
from a photograph, the emotional response to the image is often very
different. This can easily be seen when a photo is converted from color to
black and white. I soon began removing completely any colors except for the
subject of the photograph. This did two important things. It focused the
center of attention of the photograph onto the person in the photograph. It
also changed the photo from being a slice of reality to being, like black
and white photographs, an alternate version of our world. |