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Photographer Profile: Felix Wagner

I was born in a very small town in the middle of Germany. I studied in the much bigger but still quite small city of Koblenz and lived there for about 8 years until I moved to Ulm where I work at the University as a research assistant at the Psychology institute.

I haven´t really felt that photography could be such a big part of my life until I joined the very strong and interactive G+ community. Sharing my work with so many people and communicating with others all around the globe really pushes and inspires me to become a better photographer.

Q: When or why did you decide to start taking pictures? Did someone influence you?

I never made a conscious decision to take pictures. I always liked taking pictures and have always been interested in creating visual appealing stuff. I got my DSLR about ten months ago because I wanted to have more control composing my shots but I wasn´t really sure what I wanted to shoot until I saw and got inspired by the work of other Photographers of the G+ community. Inspiration comes from everywhere…shots of other photographers, books, movies, music.

Q: Can you recall the first photo you took (or saw) that made you go WOW!?

I guess I never took a WOW-shot myself because there are always details that I can make better or different and that´s a good thing. Considering the work of others it´s not one single shot that made me go WOW it´s rather those people that are able to turn a simple thing such as photography into a unique style of art over a longer period of time.

Q: Do you have any formal training in photography?

I never had a training or such. I think street-photography is the best the best way to improve your skills as you need to be able to frame a shot and set the camera within a second.

Q: What is your favorite gear for shooting on the street?

As long as I have some sort of device with me that is able to capture the things I see I am pretty satisfied with what I have. Primarily this is my Canon with a 50mm prime lens and since last week a 28mm lens.

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist and what do you think of the word artist?

The word artist is way too subjective and vague to put myself or others in that category. I consider myself as someone that tries to create visual appealing images without actively manipulating the scenery (I know that´s not 100% possible).

Q: What has been the single biggest obstacle for you growing as a street photographer?

From time to time I get bored or even annoyed with the scenes the small city I live in provides me. And I figured out that I get a bit lazy when it´s cold and rainy…although I know that these are very good conditions to get some great shots. I still wonder if there are some sort of special gloves for photographers ;)

Q: Describe a typical day for you as a street photographer?

Ever since I started shooting the streets I try to take my camera everywhere I go. So I don´t specifically prepare for shootings. Before or after work or at the weekends I just go out and see what the day brings. Sometimes I get ten good shots in an hour sometimes nothing I see seems worth to be captured.

Q: How do you describe your style as a street photographer?

That is not easy to answer…I would say my primarily intention is to stay invisible, to melt in the crowd. I am definitely not the candid street shot type of photographer. I really hate it when people stare into the camera and I delete those shots almost immediately…I want to capture things that would have happened whether I´m there or not. I try to combine geometry, contrasts, shadows and light with the very special human factor.

Q: What inspires you to be a street photographer

What really inspires me is the feeling that everything that´s happening in the streets will only be there for one little moment. I love that challenge. Seeing and capturing beauty in the most ordinary situations is what strives me to go out and make as much as shots as I can.

Q: Tell a little secret about yourself that no-one knows …

Okay…first poster of a band I had was of the fabulous NKOTB (please don´t google that!)

Felix Wagner

G+ Profile: http://gplus.to/fehwag

500px: http://500px.com/fehwag

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Photo of the Day: Columbus Avenue by B.C. Lorio

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Photo of the Day: Taxi by Matt Obrey

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Photo of the Day: What the hell are they? by Tofs Stefano

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Photo of the Day: L9991267 B&W by Damien DEROUENE

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Photographer Profile: Star Rush

I was born in 1968 in Saigon, Vietnam, and moved to Seattle, Washington with my family in 1972 to live in my father’s hometown. I’ve worked as faculty and administrator in college and university for more than 14 years, my subjects of interesting being composition and rhetoric, visual literacy, and creative writing. I love the idea that the world I know is increasingly marked as “analog,” and I like thinking about what that means.

Q: When or why did you decide to start taking pictures? Did someone influence you?

Since childhood, I’ve enjoyed taking photos and looking at images. My parents gave me a Kodak Instamatic for my 8th birthday, and I’ve been captivated by photographic images since. The camera, and images, have always played an important part in my personal and creative life--even as I sometimes set it aside for short times in the face of demanding professional commitments. Since childhood, I’ve turned to images (my own and others) to speak for me and about me; they say what words can not and can pierce the core of an idea or feeling. I’ve been taking photographs since childhood, but only in recent years started to move a significant amount of my focused attention from other aspects of my professional life toward my photography, to my creative practices.

Q: Can you recall the first photo you took (or saw) that made you go WOW!?

I first saw Robert Doisneau’s “Kiss” when I was a college freshmen, and I remember sinking into that image of stillness amidst bustle, of passion depicted against fleeting strangers in public. I went out and bought a huge print and hung it in my dorm room. That image made me go “wow” but in a quiet way--I thought it was mysterious. More recently, I’ve been studying the work of George Tice, and my favorite images of his right now is “Petit’s Mobil Station” (1974). The photo does not include people, but it tells their stories with such beautiful black and white tones, dramatic compositional contrast, scale, and understated drama. I know that last one sounds like a contradiction--but it’s possible and hard to accomplish.

Q: Do you have any formal training in photography?

I’m a self-taught photographer. My formal training is as a writer, specifically an essayist and a poet. There’s certainly synergy between the fields of photography and writing.I find when I move between them, it’s a lot like translating, moving from verbal to visual language. Framing, metaphor, story-telling via details, imagery, and the other methods or approaches from writing play important roles in my photography.

Q: What is your favorite gear for shooting on the street?

For the last couple of years, I’ve been using my iPhone for nearly all of my street photography. It’s unobtrusive, discrete, and most importantly, with me all of the time. That last quality is in some ways the most important for me--I take more photos because I have a camera on me more often than I use to and that camera has on-board post-processing, so I can capture, convert to bw, and share the images on the go and in about 10 minutes. I also use an Olympus XA and an Olympus RD, both are 35mm rangefinders. I like their sizes, build, and size--. They go into my pocket, and I’m ready. When I’m not using my iPhone, I’m using film cameras. Some time soon, I’ll get around to trying out a DSLR.

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist and what do you think of the word artist?

I do think of myself as an artist, a continually developing one. Not everything I do is successful, to me, and therefore, I wouldn’t say all of my work is art. I don’t think “art” is a synonym for quality--it’s about effort. Artist can be a loaded word for some, which I can understand. For me, it accurately describes what I do and why I do it. I think of my photography as a creative practice, an activity of mind and body, to engage in a deeper and wider understanding of my world and myself through the making of images and my own reflection on my processes. For me, an artist is one who investigates, a person who is inquisitive and has a drive or an impulse to create as a means of expressing that inquisitiveness, be it through words, paint, movement, voice, images or other media. I’m taking photographs because I enjoy the heightened sense of awareness I gain from observing my world.

Q: What has been the single biggest obstacle for you growing as a street photographer?

The biggest obstacle involves being fully present in the moment, of being mindful of the impulses of the moment of observation before the shutter is released. Distraction is easy, seductive, and prevalent in every aspect of my life. Street photography is trying to clear that distraction away for a short time. Street photography for me is improvisation, not unlike jazz, and requires from me a heightened sense of awareness and readiness, to be available to see what is around the corner, to be able to anticipate what may happen next, to compose a photograph in the mind’s eye just before it unfolds before my eyes. This is an every-day obstacle; it’s challenging and motivating, too.

Q: Describe a typical day for you as a street photographer?

I try to take photographs every few days, because it is fun and good practice. So, a couple times a week, I will go on a photo walk in a different neighborhood, which is a purposeful outing. Usually, I’ll walk for an hour or two, have coffee along the way. But, because I have my iPhone on me all of the time, I take street photos whenever. I ride the bus into downtown 3 times a week, so the ride and the walk to and from my college campus provides ample opportunity to photograph, and some of my images come from this near-daily walk to and from work. I usually take one photo and move on. Most often, I won’t look at my digital photos until the day’s end, when I go through the shots, identifying the ones that work and deleting the rest.

Q: How do you describe your style as a street photographer?

My style is still emerging, I think. Sometimes, it’s useful to ask viewers to describe a photographer’s style--to see if the perception of others matches what I see in my work. Sometimes it does and other times, not so much. I would say my style tends toward formal, straightforward, gritty, and sometimes tinged with irony.

Q: What inspires you to be a street photographer

I’m curious about people and the ways in which we live among and with one another--sometimes in harmony and other times not. I wonder about the ways in which the personal engages in public places, how the context of place illuminates understanding for both the observed and the observer. Street photography is about fleeting moments, fractions and fractures of time, spaces, individuals mingling in a flux and flurry of energy, even if that energy is a languid stillness. I’m fascinated by the ways in which to frame that dynamism, how photographic images can reveal elements of both a personalized as well as publicized individual traversing diverse cultural and social landscapes.

Q: Tell a little secret about yourself that no-one knows …

I’m a fan of classic romantic comedies: witty, fast-talking, clever banter. My favorites are Philadelphia Story (1940), Manhattan (1979), and When Harry Met Sally (1989).

Star Rush

http://www.starrush.net

http://www.mobilephotogroup.com

http://www.ideaodysseygallery.com

#Shoot The Street #photographer profile #Star Rush

Photo of the Day: untitled by ButchTheiPhoneographer aka Clay Benskin

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Photo of the Day: Reflective Lyn by Seyed edalatpour

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Photo of the Day: Guanqian Street, Suzhou, China by Phill Jenkins by

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Photo of the Day: Ex Army Man by Canonac

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Photo of the Day: Victoria Coach Station by Dave Mason

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Photo of the Day: Interested by Street Life by Gérald Verdon

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Photo of the Day: Walker To Gaza.. by Peter Levi

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Photo of the Day: I can see the“ California Beach” by vito 邓

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Photographer Profile: Chris Gachot

Chris Gachot is a New York street photographer with a background in audio recording.

Q: When or why did you decide to start taking pictures? Did someone influence you?

I started seriously taking photos about 3 years ago with a Canon point and shoot on a trip to Costa Rica. When I got home from that trip I began researching cameras and teaching myself photography with my dad’s Nikon D80. During my obsession I discovered Gilden, Cartier-Bresson, Kubrick, Eggleston and came across some of the most amazing LIFE magazine photos. I wanted to do that. So I upgraded to a Leica D-Lux 4 (for the name of course) thinking the f2 lens would be my ticket to the shallow depth of field look I wanted to achieve. I was content with that camera for about a year until I came to find out what sensors and shutter lag were all about. The D-Lux wasn't cutting it anymore. Early this year, Fuji released the X100 and I was all about it. Still am. I would say my dad influenced me to start taking photos and the people of Google+ influence me everyday to get outside and shoot.

Q: Can you recall the first photo you took (or saw) that made you go WOW!?

Old photos of Manhattan, more specifically the 14th street Meat Market. Seeing the old photos of the tracks above 9th Avenue and how it once was, I think, is amazing.

Q: Do you have any formal training in photography?

No.

Q: What is your favorite gear for shooting on the street?

Fuji X100

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist and what do you think of the word artist?

Could be art, could be science, could be both. I let the viewer decide.

Q: What has been the single biggest obstacle for you growing as a street photographer?

Time, there is never enough of it.

Q: Describe a typical day for you as a street photographer?

Weekdays:

8:30AM, wake up, get ready for work, get on bus, get off bus, get camera out. Take photos on my walk to work from the Port Authority, put camera away, get to work. Work.

1PM, lunch time, camera out, take photos on walk to lunch. Eat lunch. Leave lunch, take photos on way back to work, get back to work. Work, edit photos.

7PM, leave work, walk around aimlessly taking photos, get on bus, go home, eat, sleep. Do it again.

Weekends:

Random photo outings and photo walks with NYCphotowalkers.

*I never leave the house without my camera. On the rare occasion I am outside without my camera in hand, I am reminded why to never do that.*

Q: How do you describe your style as a street photographer?

I tend to like things gritty.