http://www.digitalcameraworld.com March 2016 97
EYE CONTACT
Here’s looking
at you, kid
Street photographers normally try to
avoid their subjects gazing into the lens,
but depending on the quality of the look,
eye contact can strengthen an imageGESTURE & EXPRESSIONW
h i le it ’s a l most a g iven t hat i n por t ra it u re
the subject looks directly into the camera,
with just occasional exceptions, in the world
of street photography, and documentary
reportage in general, eye contact is often seen as the
moment of failure – the point at which suddenly the
photographer lost that
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wa l l obser ver st at us a nd
was spotted by his or her
subjec t. T h i s tends to be t he
default judgment for street
photography, and once
you’ve been spotted you
regretfully move on. But
it’s not always a mark
of fa i lu re, a nd it depends
ver y muc h on t he look on
your subject’s face, and its intensity.
Both of the images here share a direct look that is
neither challenging, nor quite accepting, and in both
cases I judged them better than the previous frames,
before the men looked. In the case of the man in
yellow, who was selling tobacco in a market in South
Sudan, I had intended to shoot quickly and candidly,
but he glanced up. Ordinarily I would have smiled
and given up at that point, but his steady gaze held
me, and I took my time and photographed.
The Burmese stevedores loading a river boat,
meanwhile, should have been too busy to pay any
attention to me, and I had many pictures already, but
one turned and looked. Rather than detract from the
shot, this (again, according to my way of thinking)
connects the viewer with the busy scene.The final shot, with two
‘runners-up’ at the far
left for comparison,
focuses attention on
both the spurt of dust,
and on the spectacles
of the sculptor. This
provides a visual link
between the sculptor’s
gaze, and the thing he’s
focusing on so intentlyA plain I-just-saw-you
look or, worse, a grin,
has little merit, but a
steadier gaze, with
confidence, can make
the image more
p owe r ful th a n if life h a d
been going on without
you being noticed