In one of my earlier posts I shared the photos from a day in London when I dipped my toes back into some street photography. That was in preparation for a workshop with Brian Duckett where we learned to shoot in the style of American street photographer Saul Leiter - the images from which I have for you here.
We gathered at a cinema cafe in Shaftsbury Avenue for a briefing and some guidance on the style we’d be aiming for. before walking down to Jermyn Street. Brian set us a series of assignments to shoot and here we were looking to play with reflections - in windows, cars and wherever else we might find them. Frustratingly there were many white vans in the street, along with workmen in high-vis jackets, which spoilt many of the reflections but I still found a few photos.
After lunch we moved on to Bond Street where our new challenge was to use things around to use as frames or as out of focus foreground colour and texture.
From there we walked on to Savile Row, where we hoped we might encounter some well dressed characters about town. The plan was to look for interesting details, such as stylish hats, shoes and the like. Naturally, all the well dressed folk had vanished but I did find one dapper looking chap inside one of the expensive shops.
Normally it’s typical to use a wide angle lens for street photography but Saul Leiter tended to use a longer focal length - often around 85mm, and frequently with a large aperture. I’d spend the day so far using a 75mm effective focal length but for the rest of the day I swapped to 135mm. This gave me a greater reach as the light faded and I found it really helpful for our final assigment.
Brian asked us to use shop fronts to shoot through, using colour and steamy windows to create layers as we walked through Chinatown and Soho.
Click on any image to see it enlarged.
By the end of the day I had a much better idea of the style we’d been searching for. My photos from the workshop have some of the qualities we’d been looking for, but I can see my search for Saul Leiter’s elusive style will continue.
Photos taken 16 January 2023.
