Notes on Images #002 - The first ever street photograph I shot
A letter about how I started street photography
Dear Friend,
First of all I want to thank all of you for the great responses I received after releasing the first Notes on Images! It really encouraged me to continue these letters, because to be honest, I was a little bit scared of publishing the first newsletter. So thank you for that!
For the second Notes on Images I want to talk about how I started shooting street photography and the two photos that are important for that story.
In my first letter I told you about how I studied film and had some interesting internships (read it here if you haven’t). During my third year I finally got the internship I wanted (after trying for three years…) at a film production company in Amsterdam.
For quite some time I was interested in street photography and photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. So when I moved to Amsterdam, I decided to give it a shot to do some street photography.
One morning before work I got up early and gathered all my courage to go out and shoot some street photography. Months and months before that I had been watching YouTube video’s on how to do street photography and now it was finally my time to give it a go.
I grabbed my old Canon 100D with my beloved 50mm 1.8 (in my opinion the best lens you can get for only €120!!!), I went out, grabbed my bike…
..and then across the street from my house there was an old man sitting on his walker in the sun. I didn’t hesitate a moment and biked straight towards him and asked if I could take his portrait. And guess what? He friendly replied with “yes”. I couldn’t believe it. I was ready to be rejected, but he said yes. So I stepped off my bike, got the lens cap off, give him the directions to just look straight into the lens and shot his portrait. Afterwards we chatted for a while and then I said goodbye to him.
This is literally my first photo I took when I tried street photography. I was so excited and hyped about it!
A few corners around the block later I saw another man working and he was walking towards me. With all the excitement I asked if I could take his photograph and with a little bit of hesitation he also said yes. This time it was just a snap and he went off doing his thing again.
It felt so great taking these photos, because for months I was figuring out on how to do street photography and the first two people I asked if I could take a portrait of, said yes.
If I look back on these photos they are definitely not the “best” photos I ever took, but at that time it felt amazing to take them and I am still proud of these photos, because it was the beginning of photographing the street. Which became a creative outlet for me. I don’t see it as my main way of being a photographer but it helps me to learn, see and react to things in a different way.
And it is also good for the legs, because you walk a lot when you take street photos :)
Well that's it for today. I hoped you enjoyed this little story about two photographs that are important to me. In upcoming letters I will definitely talk more about street photography, because it is a really diverse photography genre and I have some sort of love hate relationship with it. But that is a story for another time.
Have a good day, evening or night and remember to always let yourself be inspired!
Much love!
Goitzen van der Veen
Takeaway from writing this letter:
I think it’s always good to stop and take a moment to look back and realize what happened. You can learn from the past and that will give you a better perspective for the next step!
You have a question, a comment or you want me to talk about a subject? Let me know!
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