Airport Photography: Ricoh GRiii Street Photography
Locations: CVG, CLT, DFW, and EYW airports
Camera: Ricoh GRiii
Edited With: Capture One
Some snaps from a variety of airport terminals, baggage claims, and other aspects of air travel, from a handful of airports across the United States.
Shooting in an airport terminal was one of the public spaces I wouldn’t thing would make for good ‘street photography,’ but it ended up surprising me. What started out as a few snaps to kill some time before my scheduled flight quickly turned into a small series.
Airport photography turns out to be one of those things that made for a good photography recipe. The flow of passengers creates a pace that lends itself to a variety of situations. If you can find the light, typically it doesn’t take long for a subject to walk into frame. The variety of waiting areas in terminal buildings also means there’s also plenty of scenes with people seated or waiting around.
It’s a pace and environment that at least for me lent itself well to my own style. When taking photos of people in a public place, I prefer to keep the subject’s identity obscured. Partially out of respect for one’s privacy if I’m planning to share images on the internet. Also however, it lends to my personal style of photos that I like to shoot. It gives a bit of mystery and story to the scene.
I found myself shooting in monochrome on my Ricoh GRiii, which helped me compose specifically for black and white. Plus when shooting photography in airports I found that much of the large windows and generally sterile environment just made for better monochrome photos than color.
Around this time, I’ve also been experimenting with some mixed media ideas. Largely I’ve been doing this as a means to study my own composition, but also just because I feel like it. I worked in photoshop using digital charcoal brushes on my Microsoft surface to create companion pieces to the original airport photographs.
