The Decisive Moment (Street/Event Photography)

f/2.0 1/500 ISO 100

For this image, we were situated behind a building where students protesting were on top of, and Police were trying to get the students to come down. I was standing on the sidewalk with the protesters and saw this guy standing alone, and immediately took the shot because there were no distractions near him, and I knew that shooting with a low depth of field would work well here. 

f/2.5 1/300 ISO 100
This image shows the police talking with some of the protesters, again trying to convince them to tell their friends to come down from the roof they were on. When the officer approached the crowd and these 4 approached the officer, I immediately followed near them and snapped several shots like these, but chose this simply because of the emotion in everyone's faces. The fact that the policeman is touching one of the protesters made this an ideal image to choose during the editing stage as well, along with the expressions on all of their faces.

f/2.0 1/500 ISO 100

I chose this image for the girls expression . She was standing next to the boy who I took a photo of previously (originally I was trying to shoot him from a different angle but she got in front of him) and she looked uneasy as we waited for the rooftop protesters to come down. Also the red square on her jacket stood out very much (even in the RAW image), and I really liked that.

f/2.5 1/320 ISO 100

This was while the protesters were actually coming down from the roof from the side of the building. The crowd cheered when they came back, and began to hum songs from the Star Wars trilogy (singing the Imperial March whenever Police came nearby, Darth Vader's theme haha). This boy turned and looked at me a midst the crowd cheering and clapping so I snapped the photo quickly and thankfully the results are good (in my opinion).

Overall shooting street/event photos was interesting for me because it got me to be on my feet the entire time, always looking for something to shoot. I've shot several concerts before so I have some experience doing this, but this was much easier for me as well due to the fact that the lighting was constant and it was bright outside despite being a cloudy day. One thing I had issues with was focusing; I love low depth of field images, but with large crowds like this sometimes your focus can be way off (especially when shooting around f/2.0). The experience in general was enjoyable though, and brought a new perspective for me since I don't particularly align myself with the protesters view but can respect where they're coming from and agree with some of their contentions.