Street Photography

Bill Pierce

Bill Pierce

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I often wonder about how folks define “Street Photography?” For me, it’s just candid photography in public places. It can be indoors in a museum or outdoors on a beach nowhere near a street.

I wonder what your definition is? And, more important, what’s your favorite “street?” Mine is tourist spots - because no one pays any attention to one more person with a camera.
 
I think candid photography in a public place is a good definition. At its best and strongest, street photography is like all art -- finding deeper meaning and commonality from the flow of daily existence.

It's finding order - in form, light, subject - from the unstructured barrage of information life throws at us.

I tend to find my favorite images in places lots of people gather , whether it's tourist spots or just a regular street that holds a festival or event of some kind. You don't stand out, with a camera, but there just tends to be more going on which improves your odds.
 
Dear Bill,

My definition is the same as yours. Any other definition starts getting very fiddly.

Edit: I'd agree with the bit about tourist areas and festivals, too.

Cheers,

R.
 
I agree with Bill and Roger, and also love festivals.

ja-fest-2009_1.jpg
 
personally I think it's a stupid term, Street photography means photographs made in the street, but really who needs terms like this? do we then have hill photography, paddock photography, farm photography, public transport photography, in the back yard photography 🙂 . helen and colin with his 'finding deeper meaning and commonality from the flow of daily existence'. have it right, just for all photography not just that made in a street
 
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"For me, it’s just candid photography in public places. It can be indoors in a museum or outdoors on a beach nowhere near a street."

This definition works for me as well. Though I may insert the word 'impromptu' before the phrase candid photography. Impromptu suggesting the 'improvisational' nature of the practice.
 
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DougFord said:
"For me, it’s just candid photography in public places. It can be indoors in a museum or outdoors on a beach nowhere near a street."

This definition works for me as well. Though I may insert the word 'impromptu' before the phrase candid photography. Impromptu suggesting the improvisational nature of the practice.
Click to expand...

It's hard to disagree with anyone here, because terms like this are so unimportant in reality. But what makes me wonder is why a style is generically called "street" if you make candids then don't you make candid photographs, not street photographs. Or is this somewhat like those who want a black camera not a silver one as it's cooler? I'm a street photogrpaher sounds way more impressive than I'm a candid photographer.
 
Whatever it is it has rejuvenated my interest in photography. I used to do everything I could to ensure there were no humans in my photos. Now I've come to realise they're the most interesting of subjects. Take this simple photo that I took recently in Rome. To most people it's nothing more than 3 ladies walking with heads bowed. To me it's a memory of 3 ladies in their expensive shoes wrestling with the cobbles of Rome. It's a memory I otherwise wouldn't have.
Pete

Portra 160 M2, 35/2 Asph

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"For me, it’s just candid photography in public places"

I'd have to agree with you Bill. I'd say it's simply that.

Originally I liked NYC for street photography but it got old pretty quick. There's some good opportunities for shots there....but people started to get too predictable for me.

Now that I'm in Bangkok I actually enjoy shooting around my own neighborhood more. I currently live in Wongwian Yai and just outside my apartment there's a rapidly changing environment. Sometimes there's noodle carts out there, or fruit vendors, or wooden craft salesmen, or something different altogether. If I walk down the street I have no idea what I'll run into or see. There's narrow alleyways that lead to other narrow alleys and in each of those is even more things. I'd describe my neighborhood like veins on a leaf. One thing branches to another thing. So it's refreshing to me that every time I step out my door I have a completely different set of people, events, and things to photograph.

edit: I should note that my area is not a tourist area in the least bit. I've only seen one other foreigner in this area in the past 3 months that I've been here. Also, perhaps the fact that I grew up on the other side of the world gives me a completely different perspective on what's around me. I think I notice more little things that people living their whole lives here probably overlook.
 
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It's a tough one. You can describe street photography as "candid photography in public places", but you can't define good street photography as "good candid photography in public places". Good street photography goes way beyond this: containing historical significance, defining city's personalities on a microscopic scale, finding banality that somehow trascends, identifying manmade geometries that become natural and inevitable, noticing juxtapositions and happenstances.

It is arguably the photographic genre with the biggest gap between competence and excellence.
 
Un-posed shots of people in public places. If they're posed, they don't qualify as "street shots" imho. They should tell a story, show an emotion or just somehow evoke something in the viewer.

When I'm out on the streets, I look for anything that catches my eyes, anything I find interesting, anything I think deserves a slot of my film. That may be an interesting character, a poor woman rummaging a garbage bin or some sort of contrast. Perhaps it's a kid playing, an old man reading a paper, old men conversing...

That is my definition of street photography. OH, and this is just a personal preference, but I think emotion and stories are better told in black and white. No colour street shots from me!
 
what I think of - A snap shot in time.

What seems perfectly ordinary now, people going about life - but will be "inspected" with a whole different mindset if viewed many years from now. (tourists/fashion/cars/planes/buildings/neighborhoods etc).
 
For me, Street photography is a genre picture, where the story conveys the feeling of close distances, the presence in this scene. What has passed in such a way that evokes a feeling of beauty, admiration, regret, love, etc. A sense of movement of life.
 
I think Street is more than just candid. I think it has to be in an urban environ. At minimum, it reveals moments that typically go unnoticed, taking the everyday and making us notice how [put your favorite adjective here] it is. And to me, the best street photography has an edge to it.
 
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