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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Features

Drew English: Photographing Strangers With a Pentax 67

Chris Gampat
No Comments
05/02/2015
4 Mins read

Last Updated on 05/03/2015 by Chris Gampat

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All images by Drew English. Used with permission.

I’m not afraid of people. I’m not afraid of talking to total strangers. But for years I have had an aversion to approaching people on the street and getting them to participate in my creative process point blank. Living in New York City, you’re consistently surrounded by seemingly unlimited human diversity, which I find very artistically inspiring. My eye is often drawn to an interesting face, look or style and my knee-jerk reaction is a desire to capture their portrait. Unfortunately, my nerves always held me back and I have missed out on countless opportunities.

DrewEnglish_Portrait_002I never set out to create a portrait project. I simply wanted to find a way to force myself into approaching people I found interesting on the street and photographing them. Having the right tool was a huge part of getting this project started. I have been increasingly disenchanted with shooting digitally as a form of artistic expression. I work frequently in digital but honestly, half the time I don’t want to deal with batteries, memory cards and tons of computer time. I don’t believe in film vs. digital; there is a place for everything. I simply gravitate toward film for personal work. That being said, I found it hard to motivate myself with the idea of shooting something like 35mm. For one, I needed to make this easily digestible. If I was going to force myself out the door and into the streets, I didn’t want to have to crank through 24 or 36 exposures at once. Additionally, I wanted a format that afforded me great resolution on order to bring out the character and idiosyncrasies of the subject. Medium format was the way to go.

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Last year, I picked up a Pentax 6×7 from someone off of Craigslist. It’s heavy, cumbersome and a bit unwieldy at times, but I fell in love with it. At only 10 exposures per roll, I could start with approaching a smaller number of people in order to build up my confidence. The lenses are a huge part of it too. They are quite unique and fantastic but have an incredibly low price point compared to other medium format gear. I used two lenses for this project; a 105 f2.4 and a 55mm f4. They each offer something different. The 105 has a fantastic vintage vibe and the ability to get an incredibly shallow, buttery depth of field. It has a look I haven’t seen elsewhere. The 55mm is the newest iteration of that lens and is super sharp. If I’m not mistaken, it may be one of the sharpest lenses ever made for the Pentax 6×7 system. It is a wide angle lens (28mm equivalent) but has an extremely close minimum focusing distance. I used it to bring in a little more of the background elements into some of the work. It’s great.

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Armed with my gear, I was looking for a way to get over this fear of mine and get shooting. The Pentax 6×7 has garnered a bit of a cult following and I’d seen some truly beautiful work online and on Instagram. I was able to get in touch with a few 6×7 shooters here in NYC who have the street portrait thing down pat and orchestrate a few photo walks. This was probably the single most helpful thing I could have done. Safety in numbers, when starting out, really helped build my confidence. I was able to see how other people approached and interacted with strangers and I was able to pick up a few tricks to try out on my own. Something else that helped quite a bit, was mixing in some portraiture of friends. It allowed me to work on my composition and technique in a really relaxed environment in addition to just getting me in the vibe of shooting portraits, bantering and being vocal about why I wanted to take the photograph. This helped immensely when approaching strangers.

I think my biggest misconception prior to just getting out there and doing it, was that it was going to be a big deal. I always thought I’d have to engage in a lengthy conversation, but I’ve never had to. I’ve refined my approach and now it’s really nothing more than, “Excuse me, could I take your portrait? I really just like your look.” 9 times out of 10 it works like a charm. Most people are even a bit flattered that I’d want to photograph them. Also, having a camera that’s the size of my head doesn’t hurt as it’s a wonderful conversation starter. More than once I’ve turned someone approaching me with a question about my camera into a portrait opportunity.

These are all photographs captured in March of 2015. What you’ll see in this post is a good mix of strangers and friends but that being said, I don’t feel like I sold myself short on my intention…getting comfortable with street portraiture. Coming out of this I truly feel like my photography has changed for the better. It’s not just about technical ability for me, but also about interaction and environment and I feel that this first portrait endeavor has taken me a step closer to some larger artistic goals.

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camera Drew English film lenses medium format nyc pentax Pentax 67 portraits strangers
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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