What are the commercial tricks behind the "Street Photography Holy Land"?, Hangzhou Hubin, Beijing Sanlitun, Chengdu Taikoo Li Units | Street Photography | Holy Land

Yesterday, the woman involved in the Taikoo Li street shooting incident in Chengdu was suspended from work and topped the hot search list. The Propaganda Department of China Petroleum Beijing Project Management Company responded to media reports that both parties involved have been suspended from work and are under investigation by the Commission for Discipline Inspection. The company's leadership is currently holding a meeting to discuss the matter. The company's disciplinary commission has intervened in this matter and the incident is currently under investigation.

Taikoo Li urgently signs and prohibits street photography?

Yesterday, a picture was widely circulated online, with multiple signs erected in Taikoo Li, displaying: "We do not support any photography that infringes on consumer portrait rights and affects consumer shopping experience; we do not allow any commercial photography without our company's permission..." A blogger posted, "After the Hu Yong incident escalated nationwide yesterday, this yellow sign was immediately erected today!"

There was a notice board in Taikoo Li earlier that reminded us of the relevant shooting

After investigation by reporters, it was found that the photo of the plaque was taken in 2020 and was not specifically set up due to recent street photography events.

According to the China Central Radio and Television Network, Chengdu COSCO Pacific Place stated in a written reply, "Since its opening, Chengdu COSCO Pacific Place has been implementing an application system for commercial and media shooting, evaluating the specific situation of all shooting applications, and reserves the right to final interpretation."

"Chengdu Ocean Pacific Swire does not support any photography that infringes on customers' portrait rights, as well as unauthorized commercial filming, especially for street photographers who gather or engage in unauthorized filming or follow-up activities. We warmly welcome customers' personal use photography and sharing. To ensure the shopping experience of other customers, we also remind customers that filming must not affect the normal operation of the mall and tenants, and not infringe on others' portrait rights and privacy rights."

Former Hangzhou Senior Street Photographer: Street photography has a great influence

Speaking of Taikoo Li, Xiao Chen said he is very familiar with it. "I went there several times to take street photos a few years ago." Because of the strong inclusiveness of fashion, Chengdu Taikoo Li and Beijing Sanlitun have become recognized street photo destinations in the industry. However, there are also online claims of "Four Streets Photography Resort": "Sanlitun" and "798" in Beijing, "Nanjing Road" and "Tianzifang" in Shanghai, "Taikoo Village" and "Chunxi Road" in Chengdu, and "Hubin Pedestrian Street" and "Jiali Center" in Hangzhou.

Xiao Chen, born in the 1990s, resigned from his previous employer in 2018 and became a full-time street photography photographer - he was also one of the earliest street photography photographers in Hangzhou. At that time, the short video platform represented by Tiktok rose rapidly. Xiao Chen saw the business opportunities behind it, and thought that street photography should be the outlet of short video for the photography industry.

At the beginning, Xiao Chen carried a camera on his back every day and wandered around the lakeside area of Hangzhou. There were many high-end shopping malls nearby, and there was a large flow of people. Beautiful and fashionable girls often passed by. "Beautiful girls, everyone loves to watch. Let's start by making traffic."

When Xiaochen sees a beautiful girl, he goes to take photos. As long as the other party doesn't refuse, the photos usually pass smoothly. Some girls don't want to be photographed, so Xiaochen naturally looks for the next shooting subject.

"After the shooting, it will be sent to my Tiktok account. Some girls will find me if they find it inappropriate, or report it directly through the platform, so I will delete it."

"At first, I was guarding there every day, waiting for the beautiful girl to appear. Later, the traffic started to rise, and some internet celebrities and institutions took the initiative to find cooperation."

Screenshots of street photos taken by Xiao Chen and his team

Xiao Chen was too busy alone and started recruiting photographers, editors, copywriters, etc. He formed a team and registered and copied accounts with the same style.

"In addition to Tiktok, I also registered accounts on other platforms. Anyway, the street photos and video clips were taken and distributed to all platforms." At the peak, Xiao Chen and his team had more than 100 similar accounts. "After the account was created into a matrix, it began to continuously receive advertisements and make commercial shoots."

Xiao Chen said that there are usually two types of commercial filming. One is to invite "internet celebrities" with tens or millions of fans, who already have their own traffic. Both parties cooperate to achieve commercial goals. Another way is for the brand to promote a certain product, so they need to find their own models. "Find long-term cooperative models to showcase the products promoted by the brand, and the products can be hung on video links. We will commission based on traffic."

In June 2019, Xiao Li, a photographer of Hangzhou street photography, said in an interview with the media that the popularity of street photography was mainly due to Tiktok. Weibo could not follow the flow route, even if it was a large number with tens of millions of fans, it could only sell 30 orders at most, while the flow on Tiktok could be imported into Taobao stores and realized directly

At that time, the CEO of a Hangzhou media company admitted that almost every street photography influencer or internet celebrity seen through short videos had been carefully installed. "From hairstyles, clothing, accessories, shoes and bags, cosmetics, and even a cup of beverage in hand, all may be commercial implants."

In 2019, Urban Express conducted an in-depth report on street photography.

A beautiful woman dressed in cool clothes splits a fork or flips a difficult somersault while walking; A visually appealing young couple was rolling over the road when the boy suddenly transformed into a Popeye sailor, picked up his girlfriend, and performed the "magic of love" in circles. Relying on such unconventional scenes, the lakeside commercial district in Hangzhou, Sanlitun in Beijing, and Taikoo Village in Chengdu unexpectedly caught fire.

At that time, the topic of # Hangzhou Street Shooting # once topped the hot search list on Weibo. However, the over 94 million views not only bring praise, but most netizens also point out that these beautiful and handsome guys are not just occasional shots. These exciting plotlines staged on various platforms are actually handled by dedicated teams behind the scenes.

At the entrance of the commercial complex of Raffles in Qianjiang New City, Hangzhou, we witnessed the entire process of filming such videos.

"Okay, okay, it's good. The rotation should be a bit larger, and remember to raise your hand a bit later to show an angry look." At the entrance of the Happy Tea Shop in Raffles, a capable female photographer wearing a black fisherman's hat and gray cuffs was "lecturing" to the beautiful woman wearing a matcha colored dress next to her. Not far away, another photographer is also gesturing to the three boys next to him who appear to be performing in a group performance, "walking".

"Come, prepare, action." With a command from the female photographer, the other three male photographers stood in their respective positions. The beautiful woman held a large bag of snacks that the female photographer had just given her in her arms. With a corner of her eye, she confirmed her next "position" and tore off the snack packaging while walking leisurely at the entrance of the mall.

Suddenly, the snacks in the beautiful woman's hand scattered all over the ground, and three young men rushed out behind her. Everyone grabbed the snacks on the ground and ran away, leaving the angry and helpless beauty standing in place, angrily shouting in the direction of their escape with her fingers.

After being filmed four times, this short video of a beautiful woman's snack being "snatched" by three strong men ended smoothly with a "card" and "good" prompt from the female photographer. The entire process takes less than 10 minutes

Photographer Brother Shui once set up a street photography team in Binjiang, and also set up several street photography accounts on Tiktok. He said he was one of the earliest opportunities to see street photography, "Street photography can be traced back to the middle of last year in Hangzhou, and this trend was first brought from Taikoo Li in Chengdu."

He introduced that the composition of the internet celebrity street photography team in the circle is: one street photography account paired with a photographer who can be a part-time director, and one part-time costume matching artist who can do makeup.

"There is another post production. We didn't hire any external internet celebrities before, they were all employees of the company. In fact, I don't necessarily demand to be particularly beautiful or handsome. When the beauty filter is opened, it actually looks good. However, Shui Ge's requirement for them is that they must have a strong sense of camera," to put it simply, they must be very skilled in acting. "

Before taking a short video, Brother Shui will find a professional screenwriter, who will download about 100 short videos of 15-30 seconds from the Internet, "extract materials from them, find interesting stems, match music, and the screenwriter will create stories again and add words to the video." After the employees who appear on the screen have a certain face value and some performance ability, they will perform together with such stems, and a short video of Tiktok Street will be produced.

"If it's fast, we can shoot dozens of videos in a day, and we can cut over 20 short videos from one hour of material," said Shui Ge.

In Shuige's impression, when he first did street photography, there were seven or eight teams in Hangzhou who were also trying, basically transitioning from the team that was shooting Taobao and Taobao girls. Since the second half of last year, with the popularity of Tiktok, more and more people feel that street photography is a window, and a large number of photography studios have flooded in. It is understood that currently there are no less than 200 photographers specializing in street photography in Hangzhou alone. "Ultimately, the threshold is not high and it is easy to replicate."

With more filming teams, homogeneous content has grown wildly on various platforms, and now street photography has become a "rotten street" performance. "Strictly speaking, these are not considered street photos." In 2018, when photographer Dahua left her job and started her own business, she also wanted to invite people to do street photos together. However, she found that their understanding of street photos was completely different from what was presented online.

He said that street photography originated in Europe and America, with the aim of discovering popular elements in daily life and providing fashion enthusiasts with a closer perspective. "The charm of street photography lies in its authenticity and nature, which can be communicated in advance, but not planned. Moreover, the focus is not on people, but on the overall feeling under clothing and matching."

However, he quickly realized that this approach was far from being as clever as planning and filming, nor could it be quickly replicated in bulk. For both the owner and the platform, efficiency and exposure were the top priority. Finally, Dahua gave up on this idea.

Shui Ge cannot explain why street photography has become what it is today.

He could clearly feel that although street photography "tricks" were constantly emerging, the living space of each "trick" was getting smaller and smaller, and users were exposed to more and more information, which quickly made them tired. When they found out that it was a pose, they even had some negative emotions

Xiao Chen said that 2018-2020 is the golden period for street photography, and his and his team's career reached its peak in 2020. The "street photography" account matrix on the entire platform has more than 20 million fans. However, it was also that year that Xiaochen sold all his accounts.

"I found that the traffic of street shot short videos fell off very badly, and it was more and more difficult to realize. I think one reason was that there were too many people taking street shots, and the other was related to the traffic strategy of Tiktok, because at that time the live broadcast began to be popular."

Back then, groups of street photography photographers also switched careers. "In 1819, there were twenty to thirty photographers a day in Taikoo, but now there are much fewer."

Now Xiao Chen has formed a live streaming team and has been busy decorating the venue, setting up tents, recruiting anchors and guides, and contacting clients for the past two days... He was still busy at around 11 o'clock last night. "Too convoluted! It's even more convoluted than the street photos we took back then. Too many people have come in..."

Finally, I asked Xiao Chen, since you said the golden age of street photography has passed, but the biggest social news caused by street photography has occurred, as a professional, what is the reason for your analysis?

Xiao Chen thought for a moment and said, "It's probably because these two people don't understand the business logic behind street photography. They might think it's just a few people playing with it, watching it on their computers, and at most posting on their social media. From the woman's expression and actions, they may still feel a little proud, just like when I took a photo on Hubin Street back then, some girls walked over to see if you didn't take her, and even turned around and walked again. That man may have been a bit cautious, but he didn't think it was too serious."

"They may not have expected that most of these street photographers have commercial purposes, and they definitely want to post their photos online and strive for maximum traffic."