How to Capture Street Portraits: Learn from a packet of Muah Chee
Had a craving for Muah Chee a few days ago and I went to the nearest stall to get them for gastronomical pleasure. Memories started to bring me back to the time when I met a young girl selling muah chee in the streets of Malacca. She caught my attention as I noticed her shouting to the passerbys to buy her Muah Chee. It was a rare sight for me as a Singaporean to see a young girl mending a Muah Chee stall by herself at such an age. Children in Singapore are pretty much pampered nowadays as they have the luxury of time to have fun and isolate themselves from work life. Here this young girl was trying to make a living by selling Muah Chee.
So I decided to take a photo of her and the stall along the street:
Friday, April 2, 2010
I did try to talk to her despite her being busy. And of course, I wanted to try out the Muah Chee so I decided to buy some from her. It was an interesting talk because she tried to cheat my money by overpricing her Muah Chee. But I wasn’t offended by it, besides I do not mind paying RM$2 more for a packet of Muah Chee, it doesn’t cost me anything but it might mean alot to them. I just didn’t want to be a passive free loader by just bagging a picture and then run off. I want to be interested by stepping into her life for that brief moment.
And things start to pay off when we start to be interested in people’s lives; in the things they do. Get as equally excited about the work they are performing or be curious about their normal daily lives. People will start to open up and see that you’re not here just for a quick snapshot.
I am not asking you to lie, neither am I asking you to be fake. People have brains, they can tell that you’re here to take photos just by noticing your big camera hanging around your neck. On the other hand, people have a heart too, they can tell whether or not you’re a person who’s either a cold-blooded ‘photographer’ or a good samaritan just by seeing the way you act and talk.
What I am suggesting you to do is to change your mindset. Change the way you think about photography. That it’s not just about you, your camera and the world. It’s about your heart’s interest in getting to know about the hearts of others. The camera is a tool to just capture the shot, and photography is the method to let us express what we think about people and we want others to see about people. THE MIND is the one that combines these 2 together to form a photograph. If you have the mindset of just making images of people by just clicking away, then you’ll end up taking side-view shots and back-view shots of people and try to convince yourself into thinking that it is a form of art.
I can confidently say this despite being not very well versed in photography yet because my short encounter with this girl CHANGED MY MINDSET.
This was the last picture I took before I left, I asked for a picture and she gladly agreed.
Yes I know that I didn’t pull off this shot very well, I cut her arm abit on the left. To be honest I was very nervous trying to frame the shot because I didn’t want to delay her time by thinking too much getting the camera settings right. But this shot gave me that breakthrough and understanding to know that however crazy I am about photographs, I am still ultimately a human being. In order to take this picture of a stranger whom you’ve met for a few minutes to smile naturally, I had to use my heart and not my camera to engage.
Next time when you’re out there taking street photos of people. Lets not be sneaky and try to shoot photos from a bush like a paparazzi. Lets try to engage! This takes alot of practice and of course a lot of guts to start out. But soon as we start trying I guess we’ll learn pretty quickly.
To give is always better than to receive, and this what I’ve convinced myself as an aspired travel photographer and a documentarist. All thanks to the travellight photography trip I took that gave me this opportunity to even chance upon this girl.
I want to learn more! I want to know more about the world!
