Are you looking for Haiti street photography? Here’s my best shots made on the Caribbean island for inspiration, and also a couple of this if you ever want to do the same.
Haiti Street Photography
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. If you are thinking about it, here’s what you must know about…
Safety
Just a quick heads up, I AM Haitian-french-vietnamese. I was born and raised there, so I know what I am talking about. So, is Haiti safe? The answer is, it depends.
First of all there’s always political stuff going on and sometimes there’s unrest, like when the current president is getting booted out. In these times, you want no business being on a Haitian street. It is never long until rocks are thrown and tear gas comes flying.
What about in “normal” times? In normal times it’s relatively safe, just like in many places around the world, there’s areas that you simply must avoid. Like avoid “Cite Soleil”, that’s a good policy even when I was growing up.
I wouldn’t recommend you booking a flight to Haiti and roam the streets by yourself. If you don’t have someone that knows around -and especially the areas to avoid- I wouldn’t do it. It’s not like Hanoi that has a touristic system in place.
The good news is, the warnings above is mostly for the capital, Port-au-Prince. The other areas like Jacmel (where I am from) are usually much safer. Growing up, all the “bad stuff” was always in the capital, and never in the outer cities.
The flip side is, Port-au-prince is more street photography friendly than anywhere else.
Where to shoot street photography?
I am working on this area, come back soon.
One of the best locations for street shooting are markets. There’s a few in Port-au-Prince but also one in Jacmel.
Haiti street photography Inspiration
Some notes about these images: Most of these images were shot with a Ricoh GRD III. But it is so similar to the GRD IV that they are pretty much interchangeable. I processed the images with these street photography presets.
There’s a few of them, I am forever stuck with, because when I edited them I did so with Nik Silver Efex (way before they were ever purchased by Google). And these, once you press save, you can never edit again.
The image above has a lot going for it, check the street photography portrait article.
