Shoot … in the Style of Garry Winogrand

Tomorrow I’ll be braving the streets with Cork Streetphotography taking photos in the style of Garry Winogrand.

I’d never heard of Garry but a quick Google brought me plenty of digest. First this documentary, filmed in 1982, that showed his technique and friendly nature:

Then I came across this excellent blog post about the man. To summarise his technique:

• Shoot, shoot, shoot.
• Garry Winogrand shot with a 28mm lens. That’s fairly wide, so he was always in the thick of the action. No telephoto lens allowed.
• He would frame his shot by looking through the viewfinder, so no shooting from the hip.

You can see in the video above how he fiddles with his camera to distract the people around him. That’s not a bad idea, especially when you have a wide lens!

The tips from that post, which I urge you to read:

• Shoot, a lot
• Don’t hesitate and follow your gut
• Smile when shooting on the streets
• Don’t shoot from the hip
• Don’t crop
• Emotionally detach yourself from your photographs
• Look at great photographs
• Focus on form and content
• Become inspired by things outside of photography
• Love life

I’ll be only using my wide angle (17-40mm) lens so I won’t be tempted to zoom in too much. Tomorrow will be challenging.

The photos in this post are mine, just in case you’re not familiar with Cork. I shot the first photo in San Francisco in 2007. You can find many images by Garry Winogrand on Google Images.