35mm Point & Shoot

Candid photography is snapshot photography that focuses on spontaneity rather than technique, on perfecting the immersion of a camera within events rather than focusing on setting up a staged situation, focusing on lengthy camera setup, or focusing on particularly strong lenses. more...

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Description

The photographic setup of candid photography is best described as un-posed and unplanned, immediate and unobtrusive. This is in contrast to classic photography, which includes aspects such as carefully staged portrait photography, landscape photography or object photography. Candid photography is supposed to catch rare instances of life from the very immersion into it, rather than to produce imagery of still life, to catch rare moments of "reality" which presupposes a definition of "reality."

Candid photography is also set off against the voyeuristic stalking involved in animal photography, sports photography or photographic journalistic intrusion, which all have a very strong technical focus on getting distant objects photographed, e.g. by using telephoto lenses. Candid photography's setup includes a photographer who is typically there with the "subjects" to be photographed if not close, and not hidden. People photographed on candid shots either ignore or accept the close presence of the photographer's camera without posing for photos.

The events documented are often private, they involve people in close relation to something they do, or they involve people's relation to each other. Candids are the kinds of pictures taken at children's birthday parties and on Christmas morning, opening the presents; the pictures a wedding photographer takes at the reception, of people dancing, eating, and socializing with other guests. They are taken at leisure, or at special occasions, they show people as they are when they do not prepare to be photographed.

As an art form

Some professional photographers develop candid photography into an art form. Henri Cartier-Bresson might be considered the master of the art of candid photography, capturing the "decisive moment" in everyday life over a span of several decades. Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, was one of the great and renowned photographers to document life in the streets of New York to often capture life - and death - at their rawest edges. Almost all successful photographers in the field of candid photography master the art of making people relax and feel at ease around the camera, they master the art of blending in at parties, of finding acceptance despite an obvious intrusive element - the camera. This is certainly true for most celebrity photographers, such as René Burri, Raeburn Flerlage or Murray Garret.

It could be argued that candid photography is the purest form of photojournalism, and as such, it represents an evolution that relates to classic photography just as weblogging relates to classic journalism. There is a fine line between photojournalism and candid photography, a line that was blurred by photographers such as Bresson and Weegee. Photojournalism often sets out to tell a story in images, whereas candid photography simply captures people living an event.

Read more at Wikipedia.org