[Rigsby]

(01-03-2018 01:21 PM)Dulceácido Wrote:  

Weren't cameras of that day and age like 40 lbs and use gunpowder flashes? LOL. Spy-cam. Boom!

Egg-fucking-zactly!

Candid my arse.

Perhaps today. Very much so today.

But back then, you pretty much nailed it. And you can see that a lot of those photos - the women are looking directly in to the lens. The first rule of pretending you aren't doing candid photography: don't look in to the lens.

I refer back to Kubrick and all the hundreds/thousands of photos he took. Sure some were staged. They were very staged. Meant to look not at all staged. But most were captures of real life. A little bit cheeky. Sure you could see that big ol' camera lens sticking out from the hip. Did you think he was just pleased to see you!

Candid/Secret/Voyeur are all very different but inter-related subjects. Not just in photography but in film.

I only quickly scanned the examples put up in this thread, but the look on those ladies faces and the fact they are directly looking at his big protruding 'lens' tells me, well yeah, what do you expect when you tuck a basketball sized bit of metal underneath your shirt and it goes 'POOF!' every time you get a good angle.

Talking of good angles. The downside to this type of photography, and its genius really, is the fact that you don't get to look through a viewfinder. You have to approximate. Maybe take a few prototype shots (which are expensive in themselves remember when they have to be developed) to find which way 'is up' and whatnot. Trial and error. Dedication.

I experimented with this myself when doing my Digital Arts degree. It was around the advent of the first affordable digital cameras. I would ride the trains as well. It was my thing for a while. Quite difficult to take photos when the think goes 'click/boom/bang' - damn. But most women didn't mind. I never got arrested anyway. It wasn't illegal. Public space. After a few shots, the women would settle down and become more natural and I would get better shots, this is all without my explicitly asking them 'do you mind if I take your photo?'. I tried that. No good. Bad photos. Too posed.

So I did them candid. I had the camera up and in front of my face. It wasn't secret and it wasn't voyeurism. These weren't private photos of women on a toilet or in a vulnerable position where there could be a reasonable expectation to privacy. Public space. Snap snap.

One or two would glower and just give that vibe of: fuck off don't do this. So I stopped. But most would just pretend it wasn't happening, and in fact, even end up posing in some interesting shots for me. I got some good pouts.

I even did a little bit of the video that the old cameras could handle - 20 secs maybe. Following women down the road, camera in hand. Very obvious what I was doing. Not illegal. Obvious. Not private. Public. Never being told to stop or else I would. I got quite a few 'you cheeky little bastard' smiles. I even got the odd 'ok, I'll give you a show' shots as well.

I never got in to any trouble. You can stab someone in broad daylight in London and no one cares. Do you think anyone gives a shit about some 'creep' taking photos? And the best part was, I wasn't even a creep. I had a nearly six foot tall Austrian super-model girlfriend, who was also doing the same Digital Arts degree as me. Lots of shots of her in rubber and outrageous shit. Really, why would I need to creep out on the underground and tubes? I didn't.

I did it for the same reason Kubrick did it: because I could. Because I wanted to know how far I could push it in my day, what I could get away with socially, legally even, and also morally. It was art man. It really fucking was.

I got some great photos from back then. Pretty tame now when you see what we have at our disposal, but still. It was fun. No women were harmed in the making of those productions. If I ever saw they were uncomfortable, I stopped.

Like I said, most pretend not to notice you after a while, but sometimes you get lucky and they put on a show. What do I mean by that? Well, a rocking of a high-heel boot, a pout, sometimes both, sometimes a smirk. Sometimes all three! Fuck I miss those days. Now, I don't want to go to jail!

Kubrick did a similar thing with his work. In fact, it's what he's best known for. He would shove a camera in people's faces till it became nothing more than another piece of the surroundings. Look at his out-takes there I linked to earlier at the New York Museum. First they look self-conscious, then they settle down, forget that the camera is there, then just act all natural. Sometimes a show is called for, sometimes not, but you can not capture anything at all if your audience is not comfortable.

It's why he did so many takes in his films. No different to him taking lots of shots of the camera. He was a genius. But he was also very pragmatic and 'shit against the wall so some of it must stick' as well.

Kubrick just extended the whole 'photograph camera' up to 'cinematographic camera' with him doing all the hand-held shots himself, in his most successful and artistically credited films. Pretty wild, when you see some of those big rigs being dolly'd about on rails. He incorporated the two. He could delegate, but he liked to keep his hand in as well.

The Candid school is a valid form of art. It should never be confused with arseholes who take photos of women on toilets, which is just voyeurism. But then again, voyeurism, is another valid form of art, when done properly.

[Rigsby]

It was eating away at me:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...amera.html


Music executive who earned £180,000-a-year at gig giants Live Nation filmed up commuters’ skirts with a pen spy camera, recorded a neighbour getting 'an intimate wax' and secretly wore a female colleague’s underwear


I'm too old and tired to go any further in to the deeper aspects of this.

Still, it's pretty amusing. Sucks to be him though.

I have a certain amount of sympathy. But no job. No wife. I wonder how he would feel about this if I did this to his daughter.

Not interested in moralizing right now. Make of it what you will.

I don't think he did it for the 'art' though, I will say that.

[The Beast1]

^^

The camera was surprisingly small. Obviously not candid, but certainly not the crazy boxes we're used to seeing.



Ugh, everything is just so boring today. Back then, photography was a dark magic that sat somewhere between chemistry and alchemy. Today we have simple point and clicks.

[Travel Museums]

Lots of fatties in corsets

[Tex Cruise]

(01-03-2018 08:01 PM)Super_Fire Wrote:  

What's up with guys preferring shaved pussies?

You know who has a bald mound?

A child, that's who.

This seems to come up every single time Bush vs No Bush is mentioned anywhere on the internet.

It's heading into Leftist argument territory

Because then by extension you MUST NOT be turned off even slightly by this...

.

Because you know the only people who have naturally hairless armpits you pedo?

[Rigsby]

There's no way I'd even want to attempt to do this today.

I can see the appeal back when Kubrick and his influences did it. I know the appeal of when I attempted it.

For Kubrick it was new and exciting. It was new technology at his fingertips. It was edgy. It had a certain risk/reward ratio.

For me (and I'm not comparing myself to Kubrick here in any way), it was new and exciting. It definitely was edgy and also had its own risk/reward ratio.

I discovered photography when I was a kid. A young teen. But it was sailing yachts and catamarans for me. That and home-brewed projections against the wall, of pop bottles or whatever was to hand. Crap really.

So when the advent of the digital camera came about, it was pretty new and exciting. This was something that didn't require expensive film or expensive film developing. It was almost like a perpetual motion machine. So it was only natural to want to test it out. The fact I was doing a degree in Digital Arts at the time only gave me carte blanche to be a cheeky bastard. Your honor. I never did get caught. Coz I never really committed a crime.

Most of it was crap. But I did what anyone does when they get a new camera: go out and record real scenes. I tried all that arty farty still life posed geometrical shit. And it was, well, shit.

When you photographed a woman on the tube back then, there was a certain frisson. And that was captured. Not great photography at all. But it had 'something'.

Kubrick and the others mentioned here did it so much better, so much earlier. It was a different age. Really, go to that website I linked to earlier and see some of his out-takes.

[Rigsby]

(01-04-2018 11:20 PM)Tex Cruise Wrote:  

(01-03-2018 08:01 PM)Super_Fire Wrote:  

What's up with guys preferring shaved pussies?

You know who has a bald mound?

A child, that's who.

This seems to come up every single time Bush vs No Bush is mentioned anywhere on the internet.

It's heading into Leftist argument territory

Because then by extension you MUST NOT be turned off even slightly by this...

.

Because you know the only people who have naturally hairless armpits you pedo?

Her bush is probably like the Amazon Jungle.

Beware Piranhas!