Street photography in ultra-stealth mode

Gather round, street photographers! There’s something you need to see.

In Digital Rev’s series Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera, professional photographers are stripped of all their gear and given only – you guessed it – a really cheap camera to take pictures. The show was inspired by photographer Chase Jarvis’s book The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You, and each episode succeeds beautifully in driving that point home.

Gary Tyson and Kai Wong © DigitalRev

In their latest episode, DigitalRev TV presenter Kai Wong and professional photographer Gary Tyson meet up to walk the streets in Hong Kong, and Gary is armed with the stealthiest and pinkest camera on the market. Yep, you heard me right. It’s very, very pink actually.

Even though this camera will not produce high res files or quality prints any larger than 2”×3”, it has other advantages that street photographers will instantly appreciate. As Kai says, “It gets the results, regardless of resolution. And at the end of the day, the thing that makes an image interesting is the process that goes into the photo, not the gear.”

Gary Tyson © DigitalRev

While Gary snaps photos of unsuspecting people on their walkabout, he drops some useful street photography tips too. This episode (see below) is as informative as it is entertaining, and if you’re a street photographer looking for a new way to challenge yourself, you definitely want to check it out. Just keep an open mind: once you get past the pink bit, you’ll see what I mean.

Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge – Gary Tyson © DigitalRev

Head over to DigitalRev to watch many more Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera episodes. While you’re there, make sure you take a tour around the site – you’ll quickly discover it’s a photographer’s goldmine.

Photos and video courtesy DigitalRev

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Gerard Sexton

Interesting to watch (hehehe) he reminds me of me….It sort of leaves me yearning to get back into street well maybe not. But it does illustrate that its not the machine you use its the mug using the machine that actually creates the images. Obvious yes but those rushing out to spend their hard earned dosh maybe could sit back and save themselves some money and recognise that street shooting is about taking risks but having the courage to get in close and the camera is just the means of capture it does no more than that. A proper machine has more dials too so you will likely loose more shots fiddling before the shot is taken and by then the moment has passed. Its also interesting because the future looks great because as technology advances so will the quality of these things maybe somewhere a wrist camera is being made with a lot more guts then these things will be really useful at the moment they are just a frill. I am off too check out the Apple spec…mmmm what time is it?

Mandy Schoch PRO

Exactly. So glad you followed my train of thought here, Gerry. Thanks for putting it into words. I have a feeling more of these with more advanced capabilities will be showing up sometime soon. I mean, technically, this one is for kiddies (if the color didn't give that away :) Do you mean the Apple watch? At the moment it doesn't have a camera, which surprised lot of people. Their best guess, from what I understand, is that a camera may be part of another release down the road, to entice those who didn't take to the product the first go round. The thing is, stripping a watch down to the bare minimum to only take photos could fill a niche in the market that Apple simply can't touch with all its other features. Will be interesting to see how this pans out. Great to hear your thoughts.