Vivian Maier

­Vivian Maier was one of the most mysterious photographers. She was born in NYC in 1926, but grown up in France. In 1951, she returned to NY alone and started to worked as a nanny. She also started taking photos constantly on street from that time. Her photos were discovered accidentally by John Maloof in an auction in 2007, two years before she died. Maloof uploaded this “unknown” photographers’ work on Flickr and received a lot of praise. He later exhibited these photos in Chicago and bring Maier’s work to publics. Unfortunately, Vivian Maier had passed away at that time.

Maier tend keep herself closed and always carry a camera with her when she went out. She has taken tons of negatives mainly in NYC and Chicago. The motivation behind her photos is not clear, but it is for sure is that she shot these photos for herself and rarely showed them to anyone else.

I really like her photos. I could not believe that these photos were shot by a nanny. By just looking at her photos, people may feel that they are taken by a photojournalist or professional photographer. Her work is very solid, sharp and vivid and full of detail. They were exposed accurately and composed carefully. Maybe covered by her nanny job, people looks so natural and relaxing in her photos. Also because she usually shot closely, it feels that there is no distance between the objects and her.

Maier shot constantly in five decades and had taken about 150,000 photographs through her life. That’s a huge number comparing to 3,000 photos that I took with my film cameras in the past four years. Moreover, I could hardly believe that she worked full-time as a nanny and all of these work was shot in her leisure time. Some people thought they will spend more time taking photos if they work full-time as a photographer. However, we can always find excuses for not picking up a camera and shooting.

Vivian Maier is one of my favorite street photographer. She is so mysterious and full of characters. She worked full-time as a nanny and only photographed in spare time. She only shot for herself and never published her photos. She lived in an afloat live and collected everything in boxes. There are more than 2,000 rolls of film that had not been developed before she passed away.

Decisive Moment is a term that almost everyone who interested in photography has heard about. It is a combination of right time, dramatic scene and well composition. The Decisive Moment has become to one of the basic rules to take good pictures on street, like “Third Rule”.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of my main source of inspiration when I started to study photography. I spent a long time to understand this term, which I haven’t mastered yet, and try to apply it to my photographs. It requires agility and anticipation. At that time, I always held my camera, looked for the “significant event” and waited and waited for the right moment to press the shutter. Unfortunately, dramatic scenes rarely came and I missed a lot of movements.

Later I tend to shoot with High Speed Continues mood on my Canon DSLR during events. It offered me some confident because it can shoot up to 6 frames per second.  Instead of predicting the next movement of my objects, I can get all the moments that may look interesting. I could easily get hundreds of pictures in couple of hours. However, I was not pleasant because I still could not capture the perfect moment.

It took me a long time to learn that capturing decisive moment is not the only way to photograph. Those magic moments are transitory and incredible. But are many other moments that not so dramatic but still valuable and worth photographing. They could be everyday scenes, or common experiences. Ordinary does not necessary be valueless. These normal moments construct our major live. There is some sort of reality behind it.

Unlike Bresson, there are some photographers who like to record some non-special moments in our live. In Robert Frank’s book The American, he captured some common but typical scenes that may happen around us everyday. These kind of photos may reflect some reality that tend to be ignored.

Nowadays when I take photos of things happening in my live, I want to photograph from the perspective of an ordinary person, not a photography student. Most of my photos are lose and not well composed and even horizon is not horizontal. I tried forget all the techniques I have learnt. Our eyes may fool us but our feelings are always memorable. The only thing I hope to grab in my photos is my real feeling. Exposure, composition, shutter speed and view point are not important any more. In this way, some of these images are more like a glimpse rather than “normal” photographs. Also, because I usually photograph things around me, I wish people who have similar experience may the same feeling of mime or may recall certain memories of their own.

Josef Koudelka, born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, is a Magnum photographer. He used to work as an aeronautical engineer and also take photograph stage performances for theater magazines at the same time. Later Josef gave up his engineer career and focused on photography when he was 29. Josef is well known by his photos of Gypsies and also the Invasion of Czechoslovakia. The negatives shot in Prague were smuggled out and soon became to symbols of this invasion. Koudelka won the award of Robert Capa Gold Medal as a “anonymous Czech photographer” in 1969. However, he also had to fled to England and apply for political asylum because these photos.

Josef Koudelka is a very unique photographer. Most times he refused to explain his photos. He believes that a photograph should talk by itself. In an interview in 2013, Koudelka said that he got knowledge by looking. He thought everyone can come to some conclusion if they observe sufficiently and spend enough time. He is willing to talk in interviews now because he had got the conclusions.

The way Koudelka taking photos had shaped by his early experience photographing stage performance. By shooting the same actors regularly, Josef was able to explore every possibility. This habit continues in his later projects like Gypsies. Instead of learning the places ahead, Koudelka got knowledge about the people and places by viewing through his lens and visiting there again and again. By deeply involved in the life of his subjects, Koudelka was able to express real emotions in his images.

Editing our own photos could be very difficult because we are likely get emotionally attached to our photos. Koudelka has a special way to select his best work. He usually printed them in small photos and hanging them on the and live with them so that after a long time he could take out the less favorite ones.

Moreover, he is confident about what he is doing and did not care about what other people’s thought. “I refuse to become a slave to their ideas.” Josef once said. Koudelka disdained to sell his photo and primarily took photos for himself even after joining in the Magnum.