Being Invisible

Nature photographers go to great lengths to stay invisible to their subjects, climbing trees, wearing camouflage, and sitting painfully still for hours, waiting for their shot.  To observe a system is to make yourself a part of it, and when you do that, you change it.  When you change it, it's just not natural anymore.

People change a lot when they realize they're being photographed.  I'm not just talking about strangers in the street; it's even true at social gatherings with close friends.  It's like they switch to a completely different set of muscles the instant they see the camera pointed in their direction.  They change their gait, get the deer-in-headlights look, avoid being in the photograph, smile awkwardly, pose, or try to act "natural", which is everything but.  Once this starts happening, your shot is blown, and it's time to move on and look for something else to photograph.

Unfortunately, unlike nature photographers, I don't have the luxury of shooting from 100 feet away with a bazooka lens.  There's just not enough room for that on the sidewalk, and there would just be too many people in the way anyway.

There's one thing I have going for me, though -- this is New York City.

There is so much going on in New York that the photographer is usually the least interesting thing around.  The thing is, though, it's hard to ignore that instant when you suddenly find yourself staring into a camera lens.  It's like looking down the barrel of a gun.

No, I'm not hiding behind potted plants and popping up to take sneaky spy shots.  That's being creepy.  I'm up front about the fact that I have a camera slung over my shoulder.  The trick isn't to actually be invisible; the trick is to wait for people to forget about the camera.

Try this:

Take the camera away from your face and look around.  Watch people's eyes as you walk by.  Most of them never notice you.  The ones that do will usually look away after a split second.  That's your chance.  They've mentally registered you as part of the background, and have gone on to find something more interesting to look at, and now you're cleared to take a shot.  If you'd had the camera up and pointed at them when they looked at you, that would have been when the headlight-eyes came up.

In the case where they just don't look away, well... congratulations, you've just made a friend.  Smile and say hello.

Anyway, a great bonus is when what they're looking at is also in the frame.  If your subjects have found something interesting to look at, your viewers might find it interesting, too.  Just like leading lines in a composition, eyes in a picture lead your viewer's eyes to a thing of importance.  In the photo at the top of this post -- which, by the way, is one of my personal favorites -- there's something happening and there are people watching it happen.  The four people in the photo have nothing to do with each other, but here are sharing a moment together (it was literally a moment; she had snagged her skirt on something, and fixed it in a second, and everyone glanced at the same time and moved on).

Without the three gentlemen in the frame as a supporting cast, the viewer is a lone voyeur, looking upon the woman while staying unseen.  Sometimes that's what you want in a photograph, as it creates an intimate connection with a subject.

However, for this one, the're already an audience gathering, and the viewer is invited to have a seat.