Nov 20

Nov 20 Shibuya Clowns

I was running some errands in Shibuya and quickly found myself surrounded by clowns!Turns out that Shibuya did not just become the new clown hangout but they were there to promote the Shibuya Art Festival running from 11.20~11.23.2010 in Shibuya. Thankfully they were the friendly type of clowns so as with everything I turned it into a photo opportunity. I don't profess to be a street photography expert by any means but I will share how I approach this. First and foremost, I always try to let people know I am taking their photograph and offer to give them copies of the photos I take. I think people appreciate that. Unless they have friends or family into photography, or are into photography themselves, they probably don't have an 'artistic' photo of themselves and will probably think it is pretty cool.

When out shooting 'street photography' you need a long and fast lens. My Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 II USM is great for street photography. It gives me great reach at 200mm, it focuses fast and has a big aperture. It allows me to keep some distance from my subjects and capture a more natural photograph than you would with a shorter lens. I find that f/4.5 is a good street aperture for me as it allows me an acceptable depth of field (DOF) to keep the subject sharp when moving but blur out the background enough to make the subject stand out. This DOF is nice as it allows you to see what is in the background, in this case other clowns, but without distracting from the image's subject. In the first photo, it actually shows just a clown against non-clowns so makes the subject more interesting as he appears to not belong. I always try to keep my ISO as low as possible to reduce any digital noise in the picture. In this case I was shooting at ISO 100. For my shutter speed I was shooting between 1/90 and 1/140, whatever gave me a proper exposure. I am pretty happy with the result of my 3 minute photo shoot.