Street Photography Below Street Level

Sometimes I turn Street Photography into Subway Photography. There are various good reasons for that. In the underground you can escape foul weather. On their way to and from the trains people are mostly in a rush so they tend to oversee the “hunting” Street Photographers. And in the subway cars travelers are often so focused on their smart phone or their books and papers that you have a very good chance to go unnoticed while taking candid portraits. For other good reasons to take your Street Photography below ground and more subway photographs continue reading after the jump.Another reason why I like to shoot underground during the day is that I like to play with long exposure times. To me motion blur is a creative component of telling a story in a photograph. While in the streets in bright daylight you need to add an ND filter to reduce exposure time to a level where you can effectively play with motion blur (1/15 of a sec and longer) down below the artificial lighting is typical on a level where reaching those exposure times is not a problem.

Another point not to be neglected (at least in Germany) is that motion blur (or not being able to recognize faces) is also a way of shooting street photography while being fully compliant with the German privacy laws.

As on the streets you can work with both monochrome images and color, you can play with motion in people, the moving trains or both as in the example above. You can actively hunt for interesting scenes or just sit in front of an interesting background and wait for the right subject to enter the stage. In the image below I somehow liked the advertisement of a fitness studio on the far wall. While sitting on a bench and waiting for my train to arrive the guy in his sports outfit approached from the right and I found him to be a perfect subject to combine with the billboard.

While mainly using my Olympus cams or the Ricoh GR II for my street photography I also shoot with my iPhone because it is a perfect tool to go unnoticed while taking an image, Nobody will notice you if you pretend reading your smart phone while using the cam instead, so you can get away much more while taking candid portraits of your fellow travelers. The picture below is an example for that.

So I hope these photographs provide you with some inspirations to take your street photography below grounds at the next opportunity.

 

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