I Like To See The ‘Street As Theatre’ When Doing Candid Street Photography

Written by : 121clicks Team

My name is Polly Rusyn and I’m a full-time photographer and I run street photography workshops in awesome European cities.

I like to think of street photography as capturing a moment from the accidental theatre that is unfolding in front of me made up of strangers going about their daily life. The star of the show could be a quirky character or it could simply be some interesting light, dark shadows, geometric shapes, or bold colors.

I believe that street photos are hanging out in the street just waiting to be seen, and it’s my job as a street photographer to find them, and then be quick enough to capture them, creative enough to compose them, and stealthy enough not to get “caught in the act” by the people I’m photographing, so that no one gets disturbed by being part of the puzzle I’m solving.

You can find Polly Rusyn on the Web :

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When something catches my eye, my brain starts processing, guessing, and imagining what kind of a picture I could create out of all the elements converging serendipitously around me. Sometimes I can see one, sometimes I can’t. For me, the process of “making” a candid street photo is like building a jigsaw out of different pieces of bright sunlight, inky shadows, curious forms, bold color, quirky characters or interesting happenings to which I’m being drawn. I love not knowing what the final picture will be, and that’s part of the fun in creating unstaged compositions of everyday goings-on out in the world.

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I first became interested in street photography out of curiosity about people just being people, and out of the fun of solving the problem of creating a photo out of an environment I had no control over. There’s nothing more challenging than candid photography when you have to react quickly and compose a shot at the same time as capturing a fleeting moment. Plus it’s also a form of mindfulness… I get so focused on what I’m doing I can forget everything else!

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It’s important to me to consider the people I’m photographing, in terms of their privacy and comfort, so I like to remain “invisible” while taking photos. But at the same time, I won’t hide what I’m doing nor use a long lens from a distance. I prefer to go unseen though so I don’t disturb anyone’s day.

My favorite camera for street photography is the X100V. It’s small, unobtrusive, and doesn’t look “professional”, so people think I’m just snapping photos. And as it comes with a fixed prime lens I don’t have to worry about anything other than getting the shot. I can literally put it in my bag and always have it on me.

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Aside from my workshops, and the two books I’ve written, “The Street Photography Playbook”, and “The Photo Composition Playbook”, I’m also writing a third book… so what this space, and I have an ongoing project photographing Spanish Fairs, that I continue to work and have also published a Zine. My books and the zine are available at Amazon.