Xu Chongde: Speaking from Qingdao in Qingdao Sweeping Street

Sweeping the street, which is a network term, means to capture pedestrians with cameras on the street to obtain images. As a category of photography, there is no established goal in this way, strong randomness, and shooting the character image and dynamics with unexpected and natural visual effects.

▲ "Eyes" (September 29, 1997, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Public Phone" (October 3, 1997, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Wedding Exhibition" (October 4, 1998, Hubei Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Outside the window" (December 12, 1998, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Sweeping the street, because of its considerable uncertainty and some interesting, has attracted many photographic masters and many photography enthusiasts in the past century to linger on the streets and sweep wildly. As we know foreign photography everyone: Henry Katie Bresson, Mark Lulu, William Klein, Joseph Kodka, Robert Duvano, Vivian Mel, Senmissing Avenue, etc. They are all famous street masters. Their street photography visual language is flat and simple, and truly shows the unique character style of the times. These real image records have retained and have become the world's photography classics. Bleak

▲ "Report" (October 4, 1999, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Beauty" (November 4, 1999, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Yangge" (May 1, 2000, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Playing Car" (August 7, 2000, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Monkey" (February 13, 2001, Hangzhou Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Sweeping the streets must have a certain keen observation ability and rapid response ability. It predicts what will happen in advance with keen observation, and timely capture the vivid and interesting instant image with a rapid response ability. The street sweeping has quite uncertainty. One has no specific shooting objects, and there is no fixed shooting location. The photographer is also in a relatively free state. An interested person or thing, snatch, grab and sneak shots at any time. Regarding this issue, Robert Capa said: "A photographer should have the eyes of the eagle, the power of the horse, and the patience of God."

▲ "Swimsuit Show" (August 6, 2001, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Clearance Folding and Sale" (August 5, 2002, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Demolition" (October 2, 2002, Leling Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Bird Old Man" (May 4, 2003, Fushun Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "British Advertising on the Car" (December 26, 2003, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Sweeping the street, focusing on a sweeping word, its essence is to truly record the daily dynamics of passers -by on the street, which truthfully reflects the social state of a certain era and the spirit of people. For example, Bresson's street photography "Boys", the boy holding two huge wine bottles in his arms, seeing it in front of the camera, he could not restrain the proud expression at all. Lie Song skilled the shooting and documentary style.

▲ "IC Card" (January 14, 2004, Zhongshan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "The Grand Award" (April 16, 2004, Hong Kong Middle Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Audience" (February 24, 2005, Xinglong Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Model Street Watch Show" (July 14, 2005, Rehe Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Sweep the street, sometimes blind shots. Blind shooting is the restriction of the eyes completely out of the viewfinder border. It does not compose pre -focus in advance, and rely on experience and intuition to press the shutter. The method is flexible and changing. It should be reminded that blind shooting should be used to use a wide -angle lens. When shooting, it is close to the shooting subject.

▲ "Old Man" (November 4, 2006, Huangdao Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Bird" (December 20, 2006, Hubei Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Dan Fish" (March 9, 2007, Xinglong Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

What lens does the street use? Some people think that the use of a wide -angle fixed focus lens, the basis for many foreign photography, everyone uses a wide -angle fixed -focus lens to sweep the street. For example, Moriyama Avenue uses a 28mm focal length lens, and Bresson uses a 50mm focal length lens. In fact, it is not necessary to be true on this issue. Street photography is not wide -angle photography, and any focal length can sweep the street. If you use the telephoto lens to shoot long -distance, the advantage is that it is not easy to be seen by the subject. There is also a benefit of using the telephoto lens to sweep the street. You can use large aperture blur and messy background to highlight the theme.

▲ "Bicycle" (March 10, 2011, Huangdao Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Newspaper" (June 8, 2008, Yan'an Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Repairing Appliances" (March 7, 2009, Beishan Second Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Whether it is photography reporter or photography enthusiasts, it can make full use of the time and delivery time, which is also the golden moment of sweeping the street. In order to sweep the streets, I usually insist on walking to get off work, and deliberately detour the streets and alleys, use cameras to capture men, women, children, and children, and to record the daily life of civilians in visual language. The characters in these photography works are strangers who pass by me. They hurriedly passed by in front of me and did not have any alertness to me. Everything was naturally relaxed and unrestrained. In the face of them, I did not have the slightest selfish thoughts, but kept pressing the shutter and using the lens to capture the vivid and interesting moment of ordinary people with the lens, and faithfully recorded the objective street figures that exist objectively in each period. ▲ "Demolition" (May 9, 2010, Cangkou Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Waiting for Live" (May 31, 2012, Yan'an Third Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Foot Foot" (June 26, 2013, Laiwu Second Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

How to treat street sweeping works? My approach is to hunt widely, categorize, and then find out several characteristic photography themes, and insist on shooting for a long time. For more than 20 years of Qingdao in Qingdao, I have taken the stone steps from blindly to shooting stone steps in a planned way. A publishing house fancy this topic and published the book "Qingdao on the Shijie Road" for me.

Sweeping the streets, I not only enjoyed the process, swept out my results, got rewards, and received social recognition. This is another reason why I am busy, walking on the street, and insisting on sweeping the street! I hope that the majority of photographers will be inspired from my street sweeping process, loves to sweep the street, insist on sweeping the streets, and sweeping continuously, there must be gains!

▲ "Grocery Staff" (June 23, 2014, Huangdao Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Swordman" (June 23, 2014, Yizhou Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Reading" (June 9, 2015, Huangdao Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

▲ "Motorcycles in the camera" (October 3, 2016, Yushan Road) Photography: Xu Chongde

Xu Chongde

Director reporter, graduated from Xiangtan Teachers College Photography, studied at the graduate class of the Department of Journalism at Fudan University. Member of the China Photographers Association, a member of the China News Photography Society, and China Photography Network signed a photographer.

A total of more than 300,000 words of photography papers are scattered in various photography newspapers and art magazines; more than 50 academic reports and photography lectures in international and domestic photography forums and some colleges; There are more than twenty times of the photography photography exhibition; the authors include "Grand Festival Qingdao", "Olympic Qingdao", "Qingdao on the Shijie Road", "Looking at Qingdao", "Four Seasons Songling", "Epidecture", "Come from the Island" and other individuals Collection of photography.

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