"Get close! Now get closer!" This was the mantra I heard over and over while doing street photography in Vietnam with Maciej Dakowicz, Fujifilm X-Photographer ambassador and winner of the international Lensculture Street Photography Awards. In April 2018 five of us from Canada, USA, Switzerland and France joined Maciej to share our passion for street photography and hone our camera skills.  For a week we prowled the lesser-known back streets of Hanoi, dived into markets and joined the swirl of activity in places where people congregated.  Each night we uploaded our daily images and critiqued them.  Our goal was to create strong or unique street photography, not travel photography.  Our equipment was minimalist, one camera one lens (preferably 35mm, definitely no telephoto). The take-aways for me were:

• connect with people and, if they accept you, stick around and become part of their world, then make your images
• the backs of people are boring, get in front
•  make sure all the layers and people separate and look for a clean background
• search for something incongruous, edgy or mysterious to transform it from travel photography into street photography

and of course... get close, get closer!

posted by Ted Nodwell