Street Photography in Paris

As July arrives, the first of two waves of Parisians leave the city to head towards the provinces for vacations. I was one of them last week for a week vacation in Southern France. During the long drive, I definitely had time to reflect on the topic of street photography in the country side.

To me the main components of street photography are a human setting, a human presence (or hint of presence) that are linked through a story or a feeling.  Therefore, even if street photography might have a urban connotation, it can certainly be performed in the country side, with of course, a few differences :

1) patience,  a farm community main street is definitely not as busy as Les Champs-Elysées.

 2) it is definitely a challenge to take candid shots when there are only two people in a street. 

3) in Paris, someone with a camera is a tourist and clueless. In a village, photographers only come for the national newspaper. They expect to be in the front cover the next day

4) there are a lot of old women taking their dogs for a walk. Shot variety might especially suffer in villages of <100 people.

5) animals do not count as humans, look for other shots and read point #1 again.

6) having  your companion pause as a stranger in a selected spot does not count, read point #1 again.

Jokes apart and to match the vacations period, I will start tonight a two weeks series on the topic of Street Photography in the Countryside. Hope you will enjoy the vision of a Parisian in the country side.

This entry was posted on Lundi, juillet 6th, 2009 at 14:05 and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.