Candid Photography: People Doing Stuff

“Hey, let’s go outside and take photos of people doing stuff.” When I’m shooting candid photos, I prefer to capture people doing stuff. “People doing stuff” seems like a simplistic description and it takes in a broad range of actions. People working. People shopping. People arguing. People enjoying themselves. People eating. People kissing.

What kind of stuff do I want people to be doing when I take their photos? The answer is: absolutely anything just as long as they’re not “not doing stuff.” Most photos of people not doing stuff are boring. A surprising number of photos that people try to pass off as street photography in my social media feeds is photos of people not doing stuff. The photographer stands on the street corner and shoots somebody walking across the street. Or they walk down the sidewalk and shoot from the hip as someone approaches them from the opposite direction. Yawn.

I don’t want to rule out the possibility that a few of these photographs might be interesting. Sometimes people cross streets in interesting ways. Or they wear brightly coloured clothes. Or the light strikes them in a special way. But most of the time, random shots of people standing or walking in public spaces are randomly dull.

I prefer to capture people as they are engaging their world. Their way of being in the world raises questions for me. I imagine myself crawling inside their skin and I wonder: what would life be like if I occupied their space? Saw through their eyes? Felt with their skin? Would I be tough enough? Would I have their courage? I want to create images that open the viewer to fresh stories of what it’s like to pass through this life.