Street Photography Tips, Interaction, Travel, Guides
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You’ve heard this sentiment before? Probably. A little cliché? Sure. True? Definitely. Plus, it sounds a little cooler coming from Jack Kerouac.
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken in the Mellah in Marrakech, Morocco. The Mellah is a walled jewish quarter, similar to European jewish ghettos where the jewish population was confined. While it’s no longer jewish only, it still gives an interesting look at the city’s past.
There’s a lot of shops and narrow alleys that you can explore and get lost in. While it does have its fair share of tourism in parts, it’s nothing to the degree of the medina, and feels a little more authentic and preserved too. It’s also easier to get away from the crowds and find yourself with only the locals. Which is what happened when I captured this shot.
I had been walking around the Mellah for a while, past all the shops and into a much more quiet maze of smaller alleys. People seemed curious to see a foreigner this far into the Mellah, but at the same time, the street hustlers weren’t around to hassle me so it was a little more relaxing to shoot here.
I was noticing an ad of a woman on the window of a hair salon, when all of a sudden I heard a very loud voice coming from behind the curtain door. I had my camera ready and as soon as she came out, I snapped this photo. I’m not sure what she was talking loudly about, but her facial expression here matched her tone. She actually never even noticed me and after quickly popping out to look down the street, she turned back inside, and continued on with her verbal tirade.
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Marrakech was my first experience in Morocco. For photography, it also ended up being my favorite in the country. While not being the easiest place for street photography, it makes up for it in the amount of life to capture. The colors, chaos, unique atmosphere and year-round sunlight make it a place I’d highly recommend to any photographers out there.
The only thing I would have changed about my time in Marrakech is make it longer. For cities I plan on returning to, it’s at the top of my list.
So here’s 33 photos that I was able to capture during my time in Marrakech…
* “Master Profiles” is a series profiling all the great photographers of uncontrolled life. Unlike the rest of the blog, I’m doing these in a straight profile format to make it easy for quick access to facts, quotes and knowledge on all the masters. I’ll also group them together here every time I add a new one.
Mark Cohen (1943-Present)
American photographer known for his extremely close-up flash Street Photography.
Marrakech was my first stop in Morocco and a city I had wanted to visit for a while. Luckily, it didn’t disappoint at all. Marrakech is a mix of so many things that you have to experience it yourself to really understand how special it is. It’s not all perfect here, but I knew it would be a city I’d want to return to after only the first day. Although it comes with challenges, Marrakech is definitely made for photographers too.
So here are my first impressions of Marrakech, from my personal Street Photographer perspective…
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken by Place des Ferblantiers in Marrakech, Morocco. This square is in the heart of the Mellah, the old jewish quarter, and just north of the Bahia Palace. It’s also known as the tinsmith’s square due to all the artisans that hand make items out of tin sheets. In addition to these craft shops, there’s a few restaurants too that make it a popular spot to stop.
You also have some busy streets intersecting here, which combined with all the other attractions in the area, make it one of the busier spots to capture life in Marrakech.
For this shot, I had just finished shooting most of the day around the Mellah and was making my way back up to Jemaa el-Fnaa to catch it before sunset. While carefully walking across traffic at the chaotic intersection here, I noticed how nice the light was hitting a collage of colors across the street. The complementary colors of the orange signs and building next to the blue sky, and the purple cloth against the yellow door caught my eye..
Just as I noticed the beautiful light and mix of complementary colors, I saw a pale man dressed in matching off-white coming towards me on a bike as I was crossing the street. So while trying not to get hit by any motorcycles, I quickly lowered down and captured the shot as he rode by against the colorful background. The great light and abundance of color within the desert make Marrakech one of the most photogenic cities I’ve been to yet.
*City Street Profiles is a series of guides on shooting Street Photography in cities across the world. One of the biggest things I found lacking on the internet was Street Photography info for specific cities so you can be ready to shoot when traveling to a new city. Find the best spots to shoot, what to capture, safety concerns, street tips, and more for cities around the world. (I have personally shot Street Photography in every city that I create a guide for.)
One of the main reasons for all my travel is my “100 Cities” book I’m currently working on. This is my main personal project and I hope to complete it in 2-3 years. I have around a quarter finished now and should be about half way done by the end of 2016.
It’s only tentatively titled, but just like the name says, the final book will contain photos from one hundred cities. There is more to it than that, though, so since this project is such a big part of the blog, I thought I’d give you all some details behind it.
The final book will include photos from 100 cities spanning 6 continents. I’m focusing on spreading the cities out as much as I can to give a range of countries, cultures, life and scenery. I’m also focusing mostly on the bigger and more well known cities in different countries, but I will try to mix in a few smaller cities.
I’ll visit and photograph more than 100 cities to be safe, but depending on the photos and curation, some won’t make the final cut. Some cities will have more than one photo that make it into the book too, as I plan on including around 150 photos.
Life in color. I’m focusing on color for this book so there will be no black & white. I’m looking for color to be an important aspect visually. I have a different view on “color vs black & white” photography than some photographers. For me, color contains more life. To quote the famous street photographer Joel Meyerowitz:
“A color photograph gives you a chance to study and remember how things look and feel in color. It enables you to have feelings along the full wavelength of the spectrum, to retrieve emotions that were perhaps bred in you from infancy… Color is always part of experience. Grass is green, not gray; flesh is color, not gray. Black and white is a very cultivated response.”
Another reason I chose color is that I feel it captures a specific time better. In my opinion, black & white can have a nostalgic, older feeling it adds, while removing many aspects of the time, while color adds and reflects the time. I do appreciate black & white photography, and it has its own strengths, but I just don’t feel it adds to this project like color can.
I’m spreading out the cities across 6 continents and many countries so I can show a wide variety of life around the world. Travel provides a look at so many different cultures with their own history, customs, scenery, and life. It’s fascinating to see how different we all are and live.
At the same time, it can also be fascinating to see some of the similarities we all, as humans, share, even in the most different of environments. I hope to capture some of this too within the variety of cities.
Photography can capture a people, time and place all in one split second click of the shutter. For me, this might be the most powerful thing about photography. When looking at older photos, you can see a time and place that is no longer possible to see in real life. Documenting the world we live in during times that have passed is so interesting and important to me that I hope I can capture some of that in this project.
Sometimes, ordinary life can be extraordinary. This usually goes unseen and passes without a thought, though. Finding and capturing these moments and scenes within day-to-day life is a big focus of the project. Capturing them candidly is another focus. Authentic moments can never be duplicated exactly and I want that to show in the book.
At the center of all the photos will be humanity. This will be the primary focus of each photo, but there won’t be a focus on pulling emotional strings. The focus will be on capturing humanity authentically in daily life and letting the viewer pull what they want from it. I will try to show this using a mix of both humanity “up close and personal” and in layered scenes. There won’t be any portraits, though, as candidness will be central to the capturing of humanity.
There will be more to the project than this, but hopefully this gives everyone a good idea of what’s going on with it. The whole time working on the project, I’ll continue writing plenty of photography related posts for each city I go too, including first impressions, street photos, street photography tips, interviews with local street photographers, and in-depth Street Photography guides for most of the cities. And if there’s any requests for new posts that might be helpful while I’m working on this project, just comment below!
I’ve created a page listing where I’ll add each I city I visit, in order, with the most recent number being the city I am currently in. I’ll include any upcoming and planned cities too. So you can always check back to see where I’m at, where I’ve been, and what cities are next.
I’ll also include city links to provide an easy way for finding blog posts I’ve already created for the specific cities I’ve traveled to.
And if you have any questions or city recommendations, feel free to comment below!
Cheers!
f.d. walker
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken at the Grand Taxi street right outside of the medina in Marrakech, Morocco. In Morocco they have two types of taxis, petit taxis and grand taxis. A petit taxi is your normal taxi used for local city transportation, while grand taxis are used for city to city, or village, transportation in a shared taxi system. Grand taxis are also almost exclusively older Mercedes-Benz W123 sedans.
The Grand Taxi street here is around a kilometer long and filled with these long distance taxis the whole way. I ended up coming here a lot while in Marrakech because it gives an interesting scene. There’s usually a lot of activity with all the people coming for longer distance travel and it can get a little chaotic with the groups of drivers all trying to fill up their taxis. You really don’t see many foreigners using the grand taxis, either.
For this shot, I was walking along a stretch of white grand taxis parked tightly together against a wall. In the middle was a taxi driver trying to squeeze into his cab. I liked the two white taxis against the tan wall with him in the middle dressed in black and an orange cap. The light and shadows were nice too so I walked up closer and took the shot right before he got inside.
