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Intro to Street Portraiture: Learn How to Approach Complete Strangers

Chris Gampat
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03/24/2017
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Last Updated on 03/25/2017 by Chris Gampat

For every photographer that has ever been afraid of asking a complete stranger for a portrait, know that you’ll be in fantastic hands for our upcoming workshop on April 2nd in NYC. We’re teaming up again with Adorama to teach photographers how to approach complete strangers and ask them for a quick photo, direct them to get the best photo possible, and move on to keep doing it. It’s going to be a major confidence booster. More details are after the jump.

Strolling through New York City and passing the constantly changing cast of characters that inhabit the Big Apple makes the life of an NYC street photographer a lovely one. That being said, sometimes you feel like rather than the run and gun style of wide-angle street shooting, something more direct is called for to do aparticular subject any sort of justice. This workshop will cover the best methods for approaching, engaging, and directing absolute strangers who catch your eye throughout the course of the day.

The lecture portion will be kept short and sweet, making sure to cover some of the basic points of how best to approach a subject, how to make your intentions clear, and how to make sure the image you have in mind when approaching the subject is easily executable.

Rental of equipment is always encouraged, and Adorama has a fantastic selection of optics available. Testing out a lens you may be intrigued by is a lovely way to spend this workshop.

Participants will receive direct training on how to approach subjects, both how to handle someone open and ready to be photographed, and also how to gracefully leave someone be if they’re not open to the idea. For those who are open to being photographed, participants will learn how to direct their subjects in a quick and accurate manner to make sure they get an image that does both subject and photographer justice.

Additionally, each participant will receive, courtesy of Adorama, a free 24/7 camera bag from their fantastic traffic series.

NYC based photographer Daniel Sawyer Schaefer will be leading the workshop, Daniel is a regular presence at Adorama and the workshop coordinator for The Phoblographer. He is best known for his portraiture and street photography, utilizing a style that meshes modern, top of the line digital systems with rare and unusual vintage optics to create hyper-narrative images with a cinematic sense of light. His work can be found on his Instagram as well as his previously linked website.

Sign up here for $175.00.

Also be sure to check out our upcoming online street photography workshop (post-poned for next week) and our black and white street photography workshop.

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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.