Photo Shoot
Anyone who has traveled with me is well aware that I take a lot of pictures. Of everything. Not one to go home with a bunch of bad pictures of monuments with me in front of them, I prefer to document everyday urban scenes of street bustle, built landscapes and fun traffic chaos. I can call up thousands of images of famous structures at the click of my mouse, so for my personal collection I prefer to capture, as best I can, what it actually felt like to be in a particular place. In Istanbul, urban China and on occasion London, this entails trying to seize the energetic bustle that defines daily life in these massive metropolises and, somehow, make it shine through a still photograph. Alas, since my camera has an amazing video function I often catch myself cheating a bit and filming the amazing urban scenes I come across. In the end, though, I still prefer the crispness of still photography. Here are some examples of my attempts to capture the enthralling life of Istanbul’s streets. (note: of course, these pictures offer a very selective view of the city, as not ALL of Istanbul is like this. But these pictures are by far the most energetic, as they were taken during the central city’s rather insane rush hour.)
One thing I can’t bring myself to do so well, however, is take pictures of people. It’s not that I have difficulties with portrait photography; on the contrary, some of my best pictures have been close-ups of family and loved ones. What I’m talking about here, is the up close, in-your-face, National Geographic-style photography of ‘exotic locals’. I focus on buildings, landscapes and street scenes, because I honestly feel kind of bad objectifying people going about their daily lives as if they are some exotic cover for the Lonely Planet. I admit that I’ve tried, and occasionally succeeded, this type of shot, but I can’t help but feel extremely awkward in doing so. It’s not like I take close-up shots of investment bankers walking out of office buildings in Montreal at the end of the day, so why should I get up in the face of some street vendor in Beijing? Because he looks like the stereotypical image of what ‘China’ is supposed to be? This discomfort with objectifying people as exotic stereotypes means that when I do attempt these type of photos, they often suck because of the distance and/or hasty framing my unease necessitates.
What happened in Selcuk, Turkey, however, was a whole other story. After cruising through the Saturday morning market and purchasing some olive oil soap and a nice fake Nike cap to beat the sun, my girlfriend and I took a seat in a small park just behind some of the market stalls. Not far from us, a group of kids were playing on the jungle gym. At some point, they must have seen my camera pointing towards their general direction (I’m no longer sure if I was actually trying to take a picture of them or just fiddling with the settings on my camera), because they started saying loudly in Turkish that everyone takes pictures of them but they never get copies. Fair enough! So my girlfriend and I decided that it would be a nice gesture to take a picture or two of them, print out copies and send them in the mail to the kids. She proposed this to them and they energetically agreed.
Of course, being the smart kids they are, they weren’t going to settle for one or two pictures: they posed for at least twenty pictures divided between mine and my girlfriend’s cameras! And by posed, I mean POSED: we had group ‘gang on the jungle gym’ shots, each kid posing individually, a girl repeatedly pulling me aside to shoot a portrait of her with a flower in her hair and so on. As I got fed up shooting the jungle gym scene and trying to manage the kids into a decent shot like a fashion photographer, my girlfriend got dragged over to some flowerbed and bushes where the kids took turns doing all sorts of Kodak Moment poses. We got out of there eventually, thanks mostly to my girfriend’s assertiveness, and I decided that I should probably watch where I point my camera in the future.Once back in Istanbul, we went to a photo shop and had the pictures printed out. When I returned to London, my girlfriend sent them off to the kids with a nice note. In retrospect, I feel pretty good about what we did. The kids were certainly right: why shouldn’t they get nice pictures of themselves instead of merely fulfilling some stereotypical role as the ‘third world child’ in the eyes of countless foreign tourists?
As an added bonus, they will also gain international fame through a guest appearance here on Ape Rifle. So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you The Selcuk Crew. Let’s all hope they got their pictures.
When I look at the following picture after the fact, I have to wonder…Why is that kid on the left holding a knife??
