Street Cinematography
I am a very big fan of the pioneer of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson. It was told that HCB always hid his small camera with a handkerchief. When he found a frame, he would pull out the camera and take the photograph. Because if people saw and became aware of the camera, we could not capture the real emotion, which is the essence of street photography.
During my college days, when I was very much obsessed with street photography, I would go out with my Canon 1300D, and I guess it was an 18–55mm kit lens. I never took photographs without people being aware of it—not because the Canon 1300D could not be hidden with a handkerchief, but because of some other reasons.
In a documentary on the veteran street photographer Steve McCurry, he went to a park and brought the camera very close to a man sitting on a park bench. He firmly and calmly took a photograph and moved on. I guess the man on the bench even looked at the camera, but he simply carried on with what he was doing.
In my experience, it was never possible. Each time I pulled out the camera and framed a shot, no matter whether I was far away or close to the subject, people would become aware of the camera. Or someone who noticed my camera would make the subject aware of it by teasing.
Most of the time, the subjects themselves would feel shy, blush, and look at the camera. Many times, people would even come and fight with me for taking their photographs.
A film-making set is the only place where I have ever found that people never really care about a camera—not the main camera—pointing at them. Behind-the-scenes photography and videography are common on film sets, and people are usually very busy with their own work. They simply don't care about what else is happening around them apart from their work.
When I was assisting DOP Farook J Basha, he allowed me to shoot behind-the-scenes kind of videos for my own interest and edit and post them on social media, especially Instagram. Whenever I shared them on Instagram, he also reshared them.
I used my Samsung M36s phone to shoot the videos and Instagram's Edits app to edit them. On the same day, after the shoot finished, I would post them on Instagram.
So, the main challenge was that these were television commercials (TVCs), and they had not been released yet. So, I could not reveal the artists, the set, and sometimes even the product, because the product itself had not yet been launched. I had to frame and compose the shots without revealing the set, product, or artists. I like to call this Street Cinematography. Write to me at thesenathipathij@gmail.com