My recent Street Photography workshop for the Sun City Camera Club included a photography field trip to Ybor City. Ybor City is the perfect back drop for shooting street photography. It’s colorful, architecturally interesting and full of life. Murals dot the landscape. The businesses there are varied, from a cigar rolling business, to eclectic restaurants to art stores. The people are a mix of ages, attitudes and ideas. Most are open to visitors and willing to talk with strangers. They were also willing to have their photos taken.
The students in the workshop did an excellent job of finding scenes that told stories and drew the viewer in. I had a class of about 10 students and we all stayed on the same street, yet the photos were all varied, even when they came back with the same subjects. The styles of photography were all different as well.
One student, Christina, brought back portraits of people she met. But before she showed her portraits to the class she really worked on them in Photoshop, turning them into works of art. They were beautiful and intriguing. They were not “journalistic” but they could be considered a form of documentary photography because the faces were as she saw them.
Others used the city’s architecture to draw the viewer into their photos with scenes of everyday life. Others used humor, contrast or comparisons to highlight the people of Ybor City. The city’s art work, including murals and statutes made for great ways to showcase people. The posters, furniture and tiles made for great standalone photos. Workers in the city made sure there was always plenty of action.
The workshop participants surprised themselves with some of the photos they captured — a woman resting comfortably near a 2-hour parking sign and a man looking closely at a mural where the priest in the painting seemed to have his finger on the nose of the subject. It’s always fun to see what comes out in a photo.
The most gratifying part of the workshop was hearing what the students took away. A couple of them were stretching themselves when they signed up for the class. They admitted they didn’t like having people in their photos and that they were uncomfortable approaching strangers. But they did it anyway. Bob, one of the participants who was reluctant to talk to people, said the field trip got him excited about street photography and interested in doing it again. Others loved learning something new about Tampa. One student called the exercise “beneficial, surprising and freeing.”
To me, street photography is all of those things. It is also a great way to make connections, to see people as they are and to appreciate their differences. It was fun, too, to relive a slice of my days as a journalist.
