Alfredo Aleandri is an Italian street photographer, currently based in Pisa, Italy. Though his main interest is street, Alfredo finds himself recently focusing more on abstract and surreal photography.
He started shooting street photography in 2014, so his interest in street photography is quite recent. During our interview Alfredo also mentioned to us that he is still looking for a personal and distinctive style.
Currently, he doesn’t have a personal web page so he shares his work through Instagram and Flickr. Both links are shared at the end of the interview.
NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Timothy Lunn exclusively for www.streethunters.net.
Craig Reilly from Street Photography International shares his background in street photography and offers advice for those struggling to compose a street shot.
Sombreness and Serenity
Three years ago, Craig Reilly was walking through Peckham Rye, London.
Before he co-founded Street Photography International, before was published in TimeOut, and before became an Olympus Ambassador, he was just an amateur photographer, hopping jobs, moving flats and growing desperately tired of his (very) occasional landscape photography.
Something had to change.
Out of the mist reared a tree. It spread its near-empty branches through the empty park, withered and stark. Beneath it cycled a man, barely visible beneath the branches.
Craig clicked the shutter.
This photo marked the start of his career in street photography, the first photograph that combined a human form with an urban landscape – and it was a fine example at that.
NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Timothy Lunn exclusively for www.streethunters.net.
iN-PUBLiC member Richard Bram speaks to StreetHunters about the importance of gesture in street photography.
Winter Landscapes
A view of the London river emerges from the dull cloud of a December morning. Richard gestures out along the estuary, pointing toward the distant buildings of an occasional project.
When asked about the secret to his own street photography, he points to another artist: one to whom winter landscapes were also dear, one to whom a stoop of the leg or a wave of the hand was as important as a shaft of sunlight or a pop of vibrant colour.
But Richard doesn’t point to a photographer. He doesn’t point to the latest Magnum nominee or to the old masters of street photography.
“Hunters in the Snow,” Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Instead, he points to an old master of the painterly kind, a Flemish painter from the city of Antwerp working back in the 1500s.
That artist was Pieter Brueghel.
Of Brueghel, Richard says:
‘You know, you have to study the history of art. One of my favourite painters of all time is Breughel. A lot of his best paintings, like “The Road to Calvary” or “The Fall of Icarus” or some of his winter scenes, are filled with people.’
From the hunters bent forward, leaning out of the foreground, to the flattened peasant stretched across the ice in the mid-ground, his work is filled with actions, bodies, gestures.
“Road to Calvary”, Pieter Brueghel the Elder
For Richard then, the key problem in photography becomes not one concerning hard light or soft light, monochrome or colour, Canon or Fuji, but rather:
‘How much action can you put on one canvas before it falls apart? There are hundreds of things going on in some of Brueghel’s paintings – and yet they’re all gorgeous.’
To understand this problem further, we have to go back to the career of a failing businessman; one just starting his hand at photography in the mid-1980s, hoping for a change of luck.
NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Timothy Lunn exclusively for www.streethunters.net.
‘Like Chaplin Does’
Silhouettes, shadows and solitary figures traipsing through winter rain have long been staples of street photography.
But they’re not everyone’s cup of tea.
Street Photographers as diverse as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt and Tavepong Pratoomwong have long championed the ‘brighter side’ to life, incorporating humour, comedy and a sense of the absurd into their work.
Erwitt in particular held humour in high regard, claiming:
“Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make them laugh and cry, alternately, like Chaplin does, now that’s the highest of all possible achievements. I don’t know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal.”
But this goal of making people laugh ‘Like Chaplin does’ is harder than it appears.
Many of us struggle to express humour through our photography, resorting instead to the tried and tested trends of existential despair and postmodern misery.
With such cheery thoughts in mind, Street Hunters turned to one of London’s leading street photographers – Becky Frances – for some helpful tips and advice.
NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Timothy Lunn exclusively for www.streethunters.net.
Shapes and Forms
‘I’m not necessarily interested in the main subject at all … all they’re doing is adding another shape or form.’
What Rupert describes as shapes and forms are in fact two builders fetching their tools from a van outside the cafe.
‘I’m more interested in the light coming through that bench in the street and the shadows it creates.’
By the end of the interview, Rupert’s not only reduced the builders to their shadows and the bench to its highlights. He’s reduced the entire daylight shooting hours from 9 to 11. And for that matter, he’s reduced the entire calendar year from mid-April through to late June. As if by summary, he raises his hand and exclaims:
September marked the end of our five-month long run on color themes. The harvest month’s theme was perhaps the most challenging color yet… pink! How would this passionate color feature in a winning shot? Again, we were awash in a sea of spectacular color and the selection process was gloriously arduous. After the voting, it was the wildly talented Tzen Xing who captured the title for the month!
NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Timothy Lunn exclusively for www.streethunters.net.
Introduction
You’ve just taken a fantastic photograph.
Great composition. Dramatic lighting. Bold tones.
But how do you share it?
We’ve all made mistakes with social media. Whether it was chasing a trend, posting ‘like for like’ or plastering a photo with more hashtags than an Instagram sunset, it’s not easy to draw the line between self-promotion and self-importance!
So how do we share a photograph responsibly?
To help answer this question, StreetHunters talked to a leading London Street Photographer and Director of Marketing, Nicholas Goodden.
August brought the fourth episode of our five-month run on colors in the Monthly Theme Contests. The color blue theme in July gave us many cool photos to pore over, but in August the theme warmed up again with the color yellow. The competition heated up as well, with a slew of scrumptious submissions!
Yellow proved to be anything but mellow when it came to choosing a winner, and as always, competition was definitely stiff. When the dust finally settled, one shot stood above the rest? And the photographer responsible? That would be Jasmin Gendron!
PhoS Athens 2017 – A free street photography festival in Athens in November 2017
We’re continuing the countdown to the PhoS Athens street photography event – a free street photography event taking place in Athens between the 10th and 12th November 2017 which Streethunters.net is helping to organise! Last week we brought you the announcement of the official programme for the PhoS street photography festival, which will include presentations, portfolio reviews, workshops, photowalks, exhibitions, and more! As well as all these events, one of the most hotly anticipated aspects of PhoS Athens has been the street photography photo contests held in the run-up to the festival. Read on for more…
We have been blown away by the amount and quality of submissions to the Street Hunters Monthly Theme Contests, and each month has brought a new cavalcade of eye candy for us to behold. Roy Rozanski, Kristof Vande Velde, Christoph Wuzella, Sreejith Kaviyil, Zlatko Vickovic and Svilen Nachev have given us the cream of the crop through for the first six months, and they have clearly set the tone. With each month, the act of choosing becomes a more blissfully arduous task because of the standard set by the previous winners and the influx of quality work.
The calendar turned to July, the third episode in a five-month stretch where the Monthly Theme Contests will be focused on colors. As the weather started heating up, the theme got cool with color blue. But were the submissions to be cool as well?
Indeed they were! We were hit with a blast of blue, and once again, tough decisions had to be made. And once again, as we climbed into the ring to take blow after blow of blue, we knew the winner had to be more than just a snap with blue in it. Constantinos Arvanitis brought it all together with his winning shot, giving us his work that not only nailed the color, but also married it with impeccable timing and clever composition.
