Hyehwa to Mia

EvilGentleman: 5th May 2007 - 00:50 GMT

Just a little curious about your "guerrilla photography" style, I have a few questions.

I notice your most common perspective is from thigh level, and usually canted about 30° to the left. Are most of your shots taken while your left hand is hanging down at your side, camera unobtrusively held in it?

How do you manage to use a Nikon D2H Digital SLR this way without getting people's attention?

Are most of your aimed and level shots taken with a telephoto lens?

I always love your shots, sort of a grittier, more candid version of hool's work, although I find the slanted angle is both a plus and a minus.

chiamattt: 5th May 2007 - 01:54 GMT

EvilGentleman,

I hold my camera in my right hand at my side as though I were just carrying it somewhere. I just walk and take pictures of things on my right.

If there is a crowd, or no one around me I can get away with holding it in front to avoid people bumping into it. The above banana cart is an example of the camera being held in front. The freeway shot is a rare use of the viewfinder.

I am a pretty big guy and most people notice me with or without a camera. I notice people looking at me and then noticing the camera and sometimes noticing that I have my finger on the trigger. I don't usually take a shot when that happens.

All of my shots are either at 28 or 35mm. I prefer wide angle. I do a lot of cropping.

In the Mayday series, I did a lot more conventional aiming as I was at an event with a lot of media. For the most part, I like to get shots of things without people noticing at all. I also use the 'continuous low' or 'continuous high' setting. I usually have two to six shots of each shot I take. Because im walking, I get a lot of strange things in each shot which I had no idea i would get when the shots were taken.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm not sure I feel comfortable being compared to hool. He's a good friend of mine and I think we both have different styles. He's much more confident and creative than I am. His shots prove that. I am shy and do whatever I can not to be noticed.

I see hool being able to walk into the red light districts of Seoul to take shots. I do not see myself having the balls to do that.

The slant is the slant. What can I say?

EvilGentleman: 5th May 2007 - 02:47 GMT

I want to try your technique, but your camera is an SLR, and mine is a point-and-shoot with a retractable lens, so if the lens is out, people know my camera is on. I will have to save up for an SLR one of these days.

I think the way people respond to me taking photos depends a lot on the way I am dressed at the time. If I am in T-shirt, jeans and unshaven, people seem very suspicious of me, or else quite afraid. Of course, that might also be due to my wide shoulders and the fact that I weigh over 300 pounds. I look like a big fuzzy bear when I'm like that.

Other times, I will go about dressed in nicer clothes, and people probably view me as a tourist when I do that. As a result, they become far more tolerant of me, or I even become completely invisible to them.

I understand well the cropping and the multiple shots. I'm fanatical about never deleting a shot, although I do have a few accidental shots of the inside of my pocket that I managed to get rid of. I recently posted two articles (here and here, where both posts derive from a single photo, but different sections were cropped for each article. I rarely do such things, but they really did not combine well, and were definitely better off as separate posts.

As far as comparing you to others goes, I did not mean to trigger your humility, it is just that the other photographer here who like to catch scenes of street life on the move is hool. We are all masters of our own personal styles, it just happens that you and hool seem to work in similar genres.

Actually, I see hool's shots as anonymous and spontaneous artistic portraits, whereas yours have a more hurried and active pace, as often evidenced by the slightly blurred backgrounds and the famous (or infamous?) slant. You have taken different artistic directions with very similar subject matter. I have yet another direction, but that may also be due to my still experimenting with different styles. Citynoise is like a person with a dynamic personality, where each viewer may have a different facet that they prefer, but it is the multifaceted aspect that makes the personality whole and complete.

And as far as balls go, nobody will ever doubt yours. I think you post more pictures of pretty women with their boyfriends than anyone else here on citynoise. I have a hard time taking shots like that, due to my fears of jealous boyfriends starting fights. It's way too hard to fight while trying to protect a camera at the same time. Now if I had a bodyguard to hold the camera for me while I go thump some butts, that would be different.

Keep up the good work.

Oh, by the way, I still am not able to comprehend the off-topic remark about your relatives in Terrebonne that you left in my iPod article. What's up with that? Seemed innocent enough, but confusing. Maybe my mind is scrambled today?

Andy: 30th May 2007 - 07:15 GMT

You're lucky you're not in a country like Brazil where you would get your camera snatched if you carried it around like that. Thats what I love about Korea, don't have to worry about that stuff so much.

jeeff: 30th May 2007 - 07:18 GMT

andy, i challenge you to bring us the forbidden day-to-day brazilian street life. wear leotards if you must.

Andy: 30th May 2007 - 07:20 GMT

Not often you see a Korean with a beard like that.

Andy: 30th May 2007 - 07:22 GMT

Well sorry Jeeff I've never been to Brazil but walk down the wrong street here in NZ where I live and you'll get it snatched just the same.