Toronto 'No Pants 2010 event' Candid Street Photo

Hey guys, I'm very new to photography and purchased a DSLR for myself last month for my 23rd Birthday(Dec)/Christma​s. I'm learning more every time I go out and play with my camera and starting to understand the relationship between iso, shutter speed and aperture better as I go along. So my photography + post production skills are very limited, but feel free to c&c. Hope to learn a lot more from this forum and out in the field by myself.

Here's a couple candid photos from the 'no pants' event Toronto had today (350+ pant-less subway riders). I chose to play around with selective color today. These are my favorites for unspecified reasons....

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Welcome to POTN. Nice start with these photos.

I see they had a no pants day in nyc as well. What is this all about? Just people having fun? Unfortunately we don't have one where I live.

bhunter417 wrote in post #9370543
Welcome to POTN. Nice start with these photos.

I see they had a no pants day in nyc as well. What is this all about? Just people having fun? Unfortunately we don't have one where I live.

Thanks.

Yeah, the whole no pants thing originated in NYC 9 years ago from 'Improv Everywhere' and in the past couple years spread to a bunch of cities world wide. Just a fun improv event that is meant to get candid reactions from unsuspecting transit riders.

The New York one started off with 7 people the first year and then from there it slowly exploded into more of an event than anything these days. The number of participants went from 7->30->40->50->150->300->900->1,200 and this year, apparently they had more than 3000 participants in NY this year. So you can imagine that scale of 3000 people riding the transit system with their underwear.

You can check out their report and a TON of pictures on their frontpage (http://improveverywher​e.com)

Well, IMHO, the newspaper photog who told you to shoot continuous, SPRAY AND PRAY, was doing you a disservice. Even a monkey can get a nice shot if he just takes a bunch of photos.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the monkey and pay attention to what you are shooting.

bwolford wrote in post #9371849
Well, IMHO, the newspaper photog who told you to shoot continuous, SPRAY AND PRAY, was doing you a disservice. Even a monkey can get a nice shot if he just takes a bunch of photos.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the monkey and pay attention to what you are shooting.

Thanks, I would usually use the viewfinder and shoot single frames but we were both firing from the hip and when he saw me checking my pictures which looked blurry, he made that suggestion. I probably should have just increased the shutter speed to adjust for the moving people and bumpy subway ride.

Thanks again, I will keep your advice in mind when shooting.

Those are two (or four) great reasons for that event.

Man, I cant believe I missed it. Do you have a link to your full set?

They had this in LA too. I completely forgot it was this weekend, otherwise I would have went over to Union station and caught one of the trains. Looks like you had some interesting subjects to capture!

professorman wrote in post #9372622
Man, I cant believe I missed it. Do you have a link to your full set?

Haven't had time to run by the other ones with busy school, work, social life schedule and so forth, but I did a quick run through and not really many good ones. I didn't take too many and there are a lot off blurred and poorly framed shots. I'll take a look at them when I get a chance to see if any are worth editing.

You should check out the ones from the main 'improv everywhere' (New York) event. They have some great sets up on their event: (for example)
http://www.flickr.com …a/sets/72157623​061272259/
http://www.flickr.com …r/sets/72157623​185472392/

Thanks for the comments guys! I'm learning a little bit more day by day and I'm loving the learning experience.

There are times when shooting from the hip like you did can be perfectly appropriate. Lots of people dont like having their photo taken by a stranger so being nonchalant about it is the best way to go. That technique will come in handy for you in the future.

bhunter417 wrote in post #9374756
There are times when shooting from the hip like you did can be perfectly appropriate. Lots of people dont like having their photo taken by a stranger so being nonchalant about it is the best way to go. That technique will come in handy for you in the future.

I agree with bhunter. In street photography, especially on days like this one where one may want to be discreet, shooting from the hip is probably the preferred method. I would also agree with what the photographer from the Toronto newspaper told you. You increase your chances of getting a better photograph this way on the street -- I would not use this technique in a studio setting -- and after the fact when you get this totally awesome shot who is going to ask you and say, "umm did you shoot from the hip on this shot, and did you take nine other very similar shots in rapid succession?" No one does that. If you get a great shot they will compliment you on the great shot.

Thanks for teaching me about no pants day too. I like your shots.