A few months ago, I shared some photos with you that I took at the Francofolies festival. You can read the article about this music festival here. Last weekend, I went to another music festival taking place in the south of the island, in the town of Saint Pierre. Unlike the Francofolies, the Sakifo festival features international artists from abroad, not just French-speaking artists.
Ever since I started doing street photography, I’ve always had my camera in my bag. It puts my mind at ease knowing it’s close by. I like having it in my hand, and when I go shopping or just pop into the shops, I sometimes have it on my wrist just in case… Some people have their smartphone in their hand; for me, it’s my Ricoh! When I go to concerts, I like to capture those moments. It’s not easy, but the stage with its lighting effects provides a nice backdrop.
Let’s get back to the concept of being in the right place at the right time. In street photography, that’s what we often tell ourselves when we’ve managed to take a great photo, as if we needed to justify ourselves for having captured a moment! I’m the first to admit it: I tend to offer that justification when people get a bit too carried away over a photo I’ve taken. I’ve always had this imposter syndrome, and not just in street photography. Those who know me a bit know full well that I’d never put myself forward, that I have no ego and that I’ll always downplay what I do—partly because I can be a perfectionist, or simply because I always see the glass as half empty…
If you take a closer look at street photography, the idea of “being in the right place at the right time” is just a load of rubbish. As if you needed that to take a photo. Yes, sometimes it feels as though all the elements have fallen into place and you simply had to capture that damn scene, as if it had been handed to you on a silver platter. But actually, that’s true of any photo you might take. We just tend to over-interpret certain things and explain why this particular photo taken there is better than others, or why those damn elements didn’t deign to line up as they should have…
It’s like saying I was very lucky to have taken this or that photo. A few weeks ago, I sent this photo to John on WhatsApp, explaining that there was a large billboard showing a video for a pay-per-view TV channel and that in the film being shown, there was a close-up of an eye, which appeared very briefly, and that’s what I captured at 1/2500 s.
I considered myself extremely lucky because my attention wasn’t on the content displayed on the billboard, but on the woman in the foreground whose gestures had caught my eye. The billboard was just something I’d noticed, nothing more. In the end, the most important element of the photo is that eye, which reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984.
When the interviewer said to the professional golfer, “You sure got lucky out there today”, he replied, “Yep, funny that, the more I practice, the luckier I get!”
That’s what John told me. So, luck? Being in the right place? At the right time? Yes, a bit of all that, but to reduce a photograph to just that is very simplistic. I brought that luck about by having my camera in my hand at that moment, by spotting the situation and framing it correctly, and by pressing the shutter at the right moment. I’m not saying that luck doesn’t exist in street photography. I’m the first to say that photographers should stop adopting this attitude of claiming that everything was under control within the frame when they took a photo. I find that extremely pretentious and untrue. I’ve written about this before, saying that many things emerge when I edit my photos, and I always find that exciting. That’s when, for me, the photo really comes to life.
I’m going to go back to last weekend’s music festival for a moment. Even though there are plenty of interesting bands and artists at this sort of festival, there’s always one act you’re looking forward to more than the rest. An artist who makes you think, “I’d really like to go that night” rather than any other. And this weekend, it was a completely mad young artist: Miki. There were several stages and the line-up meant we had to juggle between different venues. To tell you the truth, Gwen and I cut short the end of a gig to walk the 200 metres that separated us from the stage where Miki was due to perform. The crowd was already quite dense and, like a snake, I slithered my way through the people to get right in front of the stage at a reasonable distance to get a good view.
As I explained, I always have my Ricoh on my wrist, ready to snap away. I love taking photos at concerts. I bumped into the festival’s official photographers with their Sony cameras fitted with lenses so fast they could shoot in the dead of night without any trouble. In short, knowing how the Ricoh GR III performs in low light, I was no match for them. But I like working within the constraints the Ricoh imposes on me. It’s always a challenge to get a shot when the light is lacking.
Right in the middle of the concert, the rain started to fall and lashed our faces; I was just about to put my Ricoh away when Miki decided to make her way down into the crowd and literally walked right past us, stopping just behind us on a wheeled concert platform. So there we were, right next to Miki as she performed one of her songs in the rain.
I forget about the rain and the risks I’m putting my Ricoh GR III through. And that’s when I take a photo which, as usual, will really come into its own when I edit it later at home. The rain, the backlighting, the spotlights like two menacing eyes…
So what? Just being in the right place at the right time? Yes, but as I said, that’s rather simplistic in the end. If you don’t take into account that we left before the previous concert had finished so we could get a good spot. If you don’t take into account that I took it upon myself to keep taking photos despite the rain. Not to mention the settings I’d decided to use several days beforehand to be more responsive. In short, if you don’t take all these factors into account, then yes, I was in the right place at the right time!
All the photos were taken with the Ricoh GR III | Crop 35mm.
