This evening’s meeting was held at the Commack Branch of the library. After a few announcements from Larry, members were treated to several slide presentations of Street Photography by Mike Azzato. Each slide show was carefully choreographed to one of Mike’s favorite songs, and each photo was seen for 4 seconds. In answer to a question about the speed of the transition, Mike explained that the speed captured the energy of street photography and gave a feel to how fast opportunities appear.
To produce the slide shows, Mike said he uses a program called NCH PhotoStage. Most of the time he chooses the music first, then he fits the photos to the music.
As for shooting the street photos, Mike explained that he goes out about once a month, sometimes more often, and mostly to Manhattan. He might walk 10-12 miles all over Manhattan and shoot typically 2000 photos in a single day. While that sounds like a lot, he shoots in burst mode, which accounts for such a large number.
Mike prefers Manhattan, where everyone is in a rush and no one cares about him shooting. It is much more difficult to do street photography in the suburbs where locations are less crowded and a photographer may find it more difficult to go unnoticed. The trick is to walk slowly but always keep moving.
Among Mike’s additional tricks, he only uses one camera and one lens, a 24-120mm zoom lens. He usually shoots in aperture priority at F/4. His camera has two flash cards, so he shoots in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously. Mike tries to avoid confrontations, and if he encounters objections, he will delete the photo (on one of the cards.)
For his slideshow, Mike processes every photo. This can be time-consuming, and he confided that there were photos he had backed up from his outings but had not yet looked at.
In addition to the slide shows of street photography, Mike also showed two slide shows of “pond skimming” at Killington https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPdzTlBLmY4 People ski down a hill and try to skim across a pond and reach the far side.
Finally, Mike showed a slideshow of portraits. All in all, the presentation was well received and much appreciated.