 How's it? Three exceptionally useful skills in street photography that you aren't going to learn in any book. When we talk about, you know, improving street photography and, and, you know, any kind of photography, we talk about visuals, you know, using our eyes and how to frame things and, you know, focus methods and all that kind of stuff. And you never really hear about the importance of using your ears. It had been an awfully long day photographing this wedding. You know, it was, it was a wonderful time. I was down in the south coast of England. It was summer, although the weather had been, um, well, British anyway. I mean, I was sitting outside in the little tented area where the, the, the caterers were doing this thing because, you know, the bride and groom were having their, their wedding breakfast. And, and then above the flapping of the tent and all the kind of the, the din and the clash and the catering of, you know, all the people doing their, their, you know, silver service kind of thing. There was a noise I didn't really want to hear. And that was the clapping and applauding of, of the wedding party as yeah, the bride and groom had taken to the floor to have their first dance and his muggins, uh, not there with his camera. Think about the last time that you were walking along the street and you were focused on what was in front of you. Thinking about pictures, about compositions, about, you know, whether or not that person in front of you is going to do something interesting. And you may have, you know, subconsciously filtered out noise, the commotions. If you look at the, some of the great work of, you know, people like Gary Winogrand and you know, Joel Mayovitz and the Freedlander and, you know, Cartier Brisson and all these kind of people. Often these photographs, I feel are the result of them using their ears of listening for events that are happening outside of their peripheral, outside of their vision and then going towards them like a moth to a flame. Be like these people when you are out in the street. Engage all of your senses and you'll find that the environment becomes a lot richer and that you will get these images that in the past you may have thought were just simply luck that this event seemed to happen just in front of where this photographer was standing. When, of course, that is not the case. The photographer has gravitated towards something that has caught their attention, but caught their attention audibly. Fortunately, I was just like literally next door. So I picked up my camera really quick. I just, I ran through there and trying to look calm got the first dance and crisis averted. You know, the pictures were fantastic. Nobody knew any wiser, but that was the first skill that you should employ as a street photographer, as a documentary photographer, is to use your ears. During 1993, 1994, 1995, I was at Pretoria Tecticon Art School and this was when the fall of apartheid was in full swing. This was the lead up to the first sort of democratic elections in South Africa and almost daily outside the, you know, the photo school there on the streets. There were various groups marching up to union buildings further along the street. And the union buildings in South Africa were a symbol of government there in Pretoria. They're kind of like they're almost like a White House kind of vibe, you know, up there. And they were a focal point for marches and demonstrations. And we took on as young students, you know, an idea to go and photograph these things, because there was a heavy influence on documentary and sort of street photography at photo school. And I remember walking along these crowds of, you know, people who were mostly, you know, good nature, they were, you know, there wasn't any violence. We're not talking like township kind of violence, not the sort of, you know, the Bang Bang Club sort of things. And there was often a time that you got used to the ebb and the flow of the crowd of a feeling. But there was one of the times we were there on the grass outside of the union buildings. And I think William Mandela was giving a speech. And there was a friend of mine from photo school, he was standing in front of a crowd of, I don't know what you want to call it, they were dressed up like kind of like in a sort of warrior sort of way. And they were all crouched down. And they were chanting something or other. And he was busy photographing the friend. And all of a sudden on some hidden cue, they just, they left up and they ran straight at him. I mean, this guy was like, ah, you know, what's going on? And what was happening there is he wasn't aware of what the audience, what the crowd was doing. They had done this a few times, but he hadn't been mindful of it. And once you get a feel for how things are playing out in front of you, if there are certain events that happen on a regular basis, then you can start to kind of craft your photography around this. Had he had known that this crowd of people at certain points, like every with almost monotonous really regularity would get up, charge 15, 20 feet and then drop down, he could have planned probably photographs, you know, that really made a big deal of that rather than, you know, just running away sort of, you know, because he was he, he was what we call in South Africa, like poop scared, you know, and this is when you want out and about on the street, find those events that happen. You could be at a subway station and, you know, and every, you know, that every like 10 minutes, people are going to get off the train. They're going to come down the stairs. So you can set a stage that you can set an environment where, you know, a great photograph could happen and you're letting these random players play out their little stories in front of you rather than you wandering around. Joel Mayovitz talks about this and I will link to his video at the end of this, where he discusses the idea of just standing in a street corner, just waiting to see what happens and getting rid of the idea of something monotonous, something every day. And once you get through that idea by standing at this point, then you start to see the differences. And that young guy there, Werner at the Union Buildings in 1994, you know, had he have done this, then I think he would have ended up with some fantastic photographs. It is always fantastic when you get a chance to talk to a photographer who has a wealth of knowledge and they pass on to you little tidbits, much like I'm doing now with you and they seem so obvious. And yet, you'd never considered them before, like using your ears earlier on. And there was a time where, especially during my wedding photography days, I was very much into photojournalism at weddings, documentary wedding photography, whatever you want to call it. And I found that when I was putting together narratives, the album, that the story seemed to lack a little bit of dimension, that the body of photographs all seem to be less a story and more just a selection of images from an event. And as a street photographer, as somebody who's putting together documentary work, you want to have a feeling, you want to have a sense of what's going on, of actual interplay between the characters in your story. And Stephen passed on this nugget of information, which was for every action, there is a reaction, action, reaction. If something is happening in front of you, photograph that thing and then turn around and look behind you and see how people are reacting to that event. It seems so simple, but it has worked beautifully at weddings. If you are a street photographer and you are walking along, you know, getting the people like at the Edinburgh Fringe, you know, walking down, I used to live in Edinburgh and the Fringe was a nightmare because, you know, I lived in the centre of town and just to get to work, a walk that used to take me like five minutes would take me half an hour because I had to weave through all these people, all these tours. Enjoying the street performers, this cacophony of visual excitement and sounds as well, I would have been drawn towards the street performers, to the people doing all their, you know, their crazy events or giving their monologues and forgetting to turn my attention also to the people watching them, the action, reaction. Next time you're out and about on the street and something interesting, something that's drawn your attention, so if you are caught like that moth going towards the sound and you go, wow, this is an amazing thing to photograph, you're not alone with that, so turn me around and see what's happening. When you start adding these three skills, the listening, the reading of the environment and the action and reaction, it starts to help your whole process of street photography feel less like luck and more like it's planned and when it feels more planned, when it feels like it's something more in your control, then you can start to spend more time thinking about things like composition, framing and, you know, and viewpoints and what sort of exposures you want to use because you're not having to devote time to thinking, oh, where's the picture, where's the picture, maybe if I go down here, maybe if I go down there, let yourself just go with the flow and tap into these three ideas. See how it changes your photography for the better? Now, I mentioned Joel Maivitz earlier on and now that you've got a bit of a handle on this, look into his secrets about how he creates his amazing photographs and I've linked to that video on screen here now. Thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.