Wednesday, December 7, 2011

LSP Magazine is now online




Hi streettogs!!!

We are pleased to announce that the site is finally online. LSP Magazine will be a showcase for street photographers, but also a magazine with tips, reportages, news, interviews and ideas about street photography.
The interest in street photography is increasing day by day, and we are street photographers who want to build an important reality through a passion. We have great ideas and a lot of energy.

So what are you waiting for? Please, visit our website:

LSP Magazine

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

JULIEN COQUENTIN FEATURED ON LSP

Julien Coquentin

I was born in France in 1976 but now live in Montreal, Canada, where I practice the profession of nursing at night. I never studied photography, I’m just in love with images, shadows and raindrops, gray light and stories … I do not have an expanded curriculum vitae and I walk every day in my city with camera in hand…I am a passer concentrated…photography has eaten my mind for the past four years…


Name of Portfolio : "Early Sunday morning"

"This series comes from a photographic journal that I keep every day since I arrived in Montreal with my wife and our daughter one year old in April 2010 and for a few months.
It was to learn to shoot by making a poetics of the city and distance, my work at night at the casualty department - I'm male nurse - allowing me to spend part of my life to this work.
From the beginning we lived in Mile End, migratory crossroads where come and go French Canadians and English, Portuguese and Greeks, Italians, Polish and a large population of Orthodox Jews, a district sandwiched between Park Avenue and St Lawrence Boulevard, between the plate and Little Italy, a few blocks to the contours with the boundary of two black lines in the snow: A railroad track and passing trains of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The America that once I started to photograph belonged to a landscape dreamed that I had discovered as a child in front of the television and in the dark of a movie theater, the kids from here made ​​me think of my distant childhood in Aveyron, seasons mingled with my memories, snow and whiteness with cold winters of Aubrac, a clear "boralde" to the eddy of St Lawrence. It therefore would appear to be my mind that, over time, I photographed in the streets but also the memories to come of children who grow up. I liked the morning to find myself in a calm, feel the rain or the heat of the first rays of the sun, and I liked to leave the casualty department, impregnated with the smell and mood of the others, photographing the silence, the snow and his dancing, watching the well-oiled rhythm of a crowd which moves off, night work has the virtue to make swim against the current. From splitted days to pale nights, the trip became wandering, those that Depardon described in his book "eponymous", real drunken onlooker on the boulevards of Montreal.
Geographical representation of a limited space, this newspaper is also, and perhaps most importantly, a window overlooking the interior on which the viewer will put his forehead to look at himself, because a picture is never that a mirror which reflects our history.
The title of the series "Early Sunday morning" is borrowed from Edward Hopper, who painted this painting in 1930, preserved today at the Whitney Museum in New York. I authorized myself this borrowing first because I recognize myself in the way Hopper watched a city and more generally our civilization, but also because Sunday I think is a particularly day, a silence in time, a little death.
Photography requires attention and it took me staring Montreal to build this series. "Early Sunday morning" is also the testimony of the changing nature of the city, like our face will become hollow over the years, the city constantly changes, dies and is reborn. From the movement of atoms, "hopeless fragility of the city", I tried to extract two years, here also a silence in time, here also a small death."






Camera/Equipment used: 
nikon d300, 50mm, 18-200mm, yashica mat 124 (portra + tri X), olympus om-1

WEBSITE :

LSP INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS LEUTHARD

an interview by Alessandro Falchi




Hi Thomas can you tell us something about yourself, please?

My name is Thomas Leuthard and I am a Swiss based street photographer who travels to the big cities of the World to follow my passion and tomeet friends. Street photography is just a passion, my full time jobis in IT. This gives me enough time and money to do what I love to do.For me street photography is kind of lifestyle. The interest inhumanity, the average life on the street, the reality how it presentsus every day. I'm a documenter of the ordinary life of strangers Idon't even know and never will...



In which way and when have you decided to become a street photographer?

This was a decision I made in May 2009 when I bought a Nikon 85mm lens. I wanted to shoot all my photos with this lens on the street. After a while I figured out that this lens is getting too close and I had to choose a 50mm. Now I work with a Lumix GF1 with the 20mm pancake lens. I got closer and closer over time.


Which is your approach to people when you photograph them in the street?

My approach is very simple. I see someone who interests me, I go close to him, I point my camera towards him, I wait until he looks at me, I shoot and then I walk away. That’s all. No asking, no talking, no nothing. Just shooting…


Do you prefer people’s close-up or do you lose yourself into the scene with them?

I start shooting full scene more and more as a close-up portrait doesn’t really tell a story. Just shooting candid portraits is getting boring. Full scenes will never get boring as there is much more to see. Your interest will change over time. While I loved to shoot candid portraits, I will not do it for the time being. I don't even take my DSRL with me anymore. Street is wide angle and full scenes...


Do you generally expect the situations create by themselves or do you look for them walking the streets?

It depends on the situation. Sometimes I see something by walking by, sometimes I look for something special. I keep my eyes open and my camera ready all the time. You either go shooting or shopping. Both is not possible...


Do you prefer black and white or colour photography? Why?

I love black and white as it reduces the photo to patterns and forms. Color is often distracting. Sometimes a photo lives from the colors, but this is very seldom. In order to keep my own style, I should remain with the same camera, same lens and same post-processing. Anything else will get you off the track to your own style.


Can you tell us about one of your days as a street photographer? When do you prefer to go out, what do you bring along and how long does your work last?

I don't like direct sunlight. That's why I often decide to go out when it's cloudy, foggy or later in the day, when the sun is not that strong. In fall we have a lot of fog, which is the perfect weather on the streets. Normally I go out for some hours. When I'm alone, I have enough after about 2 hours, with friends a day can take up to 6 hours. Then there is a lot of talking, discussion, drinks and not a lot of photos. Shoot alone for photos, shoot in groups for networking. I often have only my Lumix GF1 with me together with a second battery. That's all I need. Gear is overrated.



Do you have any advice for all the photographers who approach to street photography?

Get out and shoot. Don't read magazines, don't read history, don't talk, just shoot. There are too many people which don't practice a lot. You don't get a good street photographer with learning theory. It's all about doing it, doing it every day. The eye needs to be trained every day. I have pressed the shutter release button about 200'000 times so far within 3 years. 199'000 times, the result was crap. Just to mention the practical aspect of street photography.


Thank you Thomas for answering our questions. LSP wishes you a good job.



THOMAS LEUTHARD work :














Monday, December 5, 2011

LSP ANNOUNCE OUR NEW COLLABORATOR ALEX COGHE


LSP is pleased to announce our new collaborator Alex Coghe.
Alex is a street photographer known internationally. He has collaborated on many projects and has written several articles on international magazines.


Freelance Photographer currently based on Mexico City. Born in Rome in 1975, essentially a Street Photographer.

Founder of 2 communities dedicated to Street Photography: SPC (Italian language) and The Decisive Moment (English) he deals with developing this kind of photography.
Currently correspondent from Mexico for Prisma News, a national information periodic. Many articles were published for important daily newspapers, Il Giornale, La Stampa and also for The Leica Camera Blog. He works on assignment for The Telegraph.
Owner of a Street Photography School in Mexico City, SP WS.
In 2011 he is one of the involved photographers to the international street photography competition You Are Here, in Los Angeles, California.
Strong advocate of sharing photographic knowledge.

I started naturally drawn from this photographic genre. If I think of my beginnings with photography I see it as a workout to start doing street photography. Now I also do other kinds of photography, but when i think to photography i think only to street photography. 
How do i shot in the streets? Trying to escape from the clichés. Making me transport by the energy that i feel in the street and trying to make it my own to transmit it through my shots.
The street photography for me is the essence of photography: it is to capture real life without re-creating anything, it is move closer to reality and simultaneously run away from this. I seek the surreal, the moment you do not expect or sometimes just the beauty of life.
The camera must be an extension of the heart and mind and at the end of the hand that holds it. I think a compact camera is perfect for my street. Nothing reflex: yes to mirrorless and P&S.
I am inspired by everything that says something new. I am so much influenced by contemporary photographers such as the masters. For the masters i would like to quote Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Helen Levitt. There are some great contemporary, but I would like to cite one for all: Charlie Kirk. His photographic approach has conquered me. Many compare him to Bruce Gilden, and he himself has admitted to being influenced. But i I think that his approach and his research is different. And i don’t like do much Bruce Gilden...
I love Daido Moryama, a real genius.
My next projects: I'm working to spread the culture of this photographic genre in Italy and Mexico. Work not easy. I created a school for this (SP WS) and am giving workshops. 
And then my blog: in 35mm... I want it to grow with contents that no one offers. The series of interviews with the great contemporaries street photographers is a clear choice in this sense. 






Camera used:

Olympus Pen E-P1
Samsung NX200
Panasonic Lumix LX3
Panasonic GH2

Alex Coghe :






Friday, December 2, 2011

LAURENT ROCH FEATURED ON LSP

For as long as I can remember, photography has always been an important part of my life. Throughout the years, taking photographs has been part of who I am ; instinctive.The emotional power, the esthetic pleasure and the visual language of a photograph have never ceased to fascinate me.
At a time when technical perfection has become so important, I prefer the simplicity in photography , that slight distortion of reality. What I look for first and foremost is that unique, fleeting moment. That special moment that, in an instant disappears and is lost forever. In this “open air theatre” of everyday life, I try to capture life in its purest form. Nothing staged, no role playing. I go simply with the flow of what is unfolding around me. When luck offers me just what I am looking for, when everything is just perfectly and naturally in place, in harmony, all I need to do is act on my intuition.

A constant desire to express, as strongly as possible, the spontaneity of the moment. I try to blend in, unnoticed, to observe, to wait, to play with the natural light, to find the perfect angle and finally, to capture the ultimate “decisive moment” (l’instant décisif) so dear to Cartier-Bresson.


I am constantly looking for new places to explore, new ways of seeing the world, always with a view to satisfying my natural curiosity – a subject of never-ending inspiration.



Camera used : Nikon D90







Laurent Roch :
http://www.laurentroch.com

Thursday, December 1, 2011

THOMAS LEUTHARD FEATURED ON LSP


My name is Thomas Leuthard, I am a street photographer based in
Switzerland. I love to travel the world to document ordinary life onthe street. My interest in humanity brings me close to strangers, Ihave never met before, just to make an exposure with my camera. Thereis nothing more challenging than getting in interesting photograph outof a orginary and boring scene on the street. This is what I'm walkingdown the street for every time, again and again. I want to show theWorld my view of the different life on the street. It keeps me hungryfor the perfect street photograph.

Camera used : Lumix GF1 with a 20mm pancake lens








Thomas Leuthard
85mm Street Photography

http://www.85mm.ch
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasleuthard
http://lspfeaturedphotographers.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

JASON MARTINI FEATURED ON LSP


Jason Martini
I first fell in love with photography in the dark room, developing black & white images in high school.  I put the film camera down in college and studied Advertising.  I moved to Chicago in 2000 and began a successful career in technology sales. 
Photography was always in my mind and I got tired of taking pictures with my eyes.  I picked up the camera up again in 2008.. in digital and began living the dream.