JackForster
Established
Hi everyone,
With some trepidation I'm making my first (well, second; I posted a couple of shots to the "best street photo" thread) post on these forums. It's been an interesting experience, these last couple of months. I'm not sure exactly what happened but after three years or so of shooting things for the mag I work for (a quarterly for high end watch collectors) with an EOS 30D and then a 5D MkII I realized that I was sick of lugging around a heavy DSLR and several lenses, and found out that for most of what I was doing (largely straight to the website; hardly anything for print as most of our product shoots are done in Singapore, in a studio, by a pro, and then digitally composited) the DSLR setup was not only overkill but unecessary. Soooo. . .
At about the same time I started feeling that way I also started playing with my wife's old cameras from college --a Rolleiflex (which reminded me of the Yashica D I used when I was a teenager) a Yashica Electro 35, and a Nikon FE. A battery adapter and a few rolls of color film later I found myself reading around on the Internet and BIN'd a Canonet QL17 GIII off eBay.
The inevitable happend, which is that I started reading about Leicas and suddenly it seemed as if nothing else would do (this despite my being perfectly aware that the Canonet was taking perfectly good pictures at less than the cost of the cheapest usable Leica body I could find, let alone lenses.)
I find myself now carrying around an M6, waiting for an M3 just purchased from another forum member, and using my wife's FE as a second body (it's got a nice f1.2 prime on it.) (My wife, who is a street/urban landscape photographer, has meanwhile been taking great pictures with a Canon S95 and her iPhone camera, and is about to have her second show here in NY.)
I imagine this is a familiar story and it's not really philosophically pertinent but after shooting a couple of dozen rolls of film here in New York I do have a couple of thoughts --well, observations, anyway; I hardly think I have anything philosophically conclusive to offer about as thoroughly discussed a subject as street photography! Anyhow, here goes.
First, the street imposes a very strong geometry on a photograph --the rectilinearity of buildings and streets is something I feel really aware of compositionally and it's easy to fall into very comfortable, formulaic framing; something to watch out for.
Second, it's amazing how much the mobile phone has homogenized human posture --there is something about a person hunched over a cell phone that seems really kinesthetically dead, and one sees it a lot when one starts paying attention to how human posture presents itself.
Third, taking people's pictures feels intrusive. I don't like having my picture taken myself, and taking someone's image feels like stealing on a very deep level (maybe it's just that like most people who pride themselves on being very rational I'm also deeply superstitious.) I seem to need to feel that a photograph on the street is philosophically justifiable in some way --aesthetically, journalistically, or what have you --otherwise it's an inexcusable exploitation of another human being on a very serious level; it's an existential exploitation, almost a form of involuntary enslavement.
Finally, it's hard not to feel the weight of the billions of images that are made every day and wonder why one would want to add to them.
Jack
PS Oh, and then there are the thoughts I'm sure many of you have had about whether or not, in being choosy about cameras and lenses, I'm not just indulging in a sort of equipment fetishism that is not only beside the point but actually a distraction from really thinking about the photograph. . . that sort of thing ;-) .
J.
With some trepidation I'm making my first (well, second; I posted a couple of shots to the "best street photo" thread) post on these forums. It's been an interesting experience, these last couple of months. I'm not sure exactly what happened but after three years or so of shooting things for the mag I work for (a quarterly for high end watch collectors) with an EOS 30D and then a 5D MkII I realized that I was sick of lugging around a heavy DSLR and several lenses, and found out that for most of what I was doing (largely straight to the website; hardly anything for print as most of our product shoots are done in Singapore, in a studio, by a pro, and then digitally composited) the DSLR setup was not only overkill but unecessary. Soooo. . .
At about the same time I started feeling that way I also started playing with my wife's old cameras from college --a Rolleiflex (which reminded me of the Yashica D I used when I was a teenager) a Yashica Electro 35, and a Nikon FE. A battery adapter and a few rolls of color film later I found myself reading around on the Internet and BIN'd a Canonet QL17 GIII off eBay.
The inevitable happend, which is that I started reading about Leicas and suddenly it seemed as if nothing else would do (this despite my being perfectly aware that the Canonet was taking perfectly good pictures at less than the cost of the cheapest usable Leica body I could find, let alone lenses.)
I find myself now carrying around an M6, waiting for an M3 just purchased from another forum member, and using my wife's FE as a second body (it's got a nice f1.2 prime on it.) (My wife, who is a street/urban landscape photographer, has meanwhile been taking great pictures with a Canon S95 and her iPhone camera, and is about to have her second show here in NY.)
I imagine this is a familiar story and it's not really philosophically pertinent but after shooting a couple of dozen rolls of film here in New York I do have a couple of thoughts --well, observations, anyway; I hardly think I have anything philosophically conclusive to offer about as thoroughly discussed a subject as street photography! Anyhow, here goes.
First, the street imposes a very strong geometry on a photograph --the rectilinearity of buildings and streets is something I feel really aware of compositionally and it's easy to fall into very comfortable, formulaic framing; something to watch out for.
Second, it's amazing how much the mobile phone has homogenized human posture --there is something about a person hunched over a cell phone that seems really kinesthetically dead, and one sees it a lot when one starts paying attention to how human posture presents itself.
Third, taking people's pictures feels intrusive. I don't like having my picture taken myself, and taking someone's image feels like stealing on a very deep level (maybe it's just that like most people who pride themselves on being very rational I'm also deeply superstitious.) I seem to need to feel that a photograph on the street is philosophically justifiable in some way --aesthetically, journalistically, or what have you --otherwise it's an inexcusable exploitation of another human being on a very serious level; it's an existential exploitation, almost a form of involuntary enslavement.
Finally, it's hard not to feel the weight of the billions of images that are made every day and wonder why one would want to add to them.
Jack
PS Oh, and then there are the thoughts I'm sure many of you have had about whether or not, in being choosy about cameras and lenses, I'm not just indulging in a sort of equipment fetishism that is not only beside the point but actually a distraction from really thinking about the photograph. . . that sort of thing ;-) .
J.
