Spin off from "is street photography difficult?"...

[jky]

Just reading the "is sp difficult" thread, our fellow RFF member Ruben stated, "street photography is or can be approached as an Art too"...

So reflecting on this, I've never considered myself an artist, but looking at Merriam-Webster's definition of "art" as "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects" , I guess we all are artists at one point or another when out doing some street shooting...
I guess this definition is what separates a "snapshot" from sp... the "conscious" use of light, lines, angles, objects, subjects, etc. to produce something pleasing.

I've always said I just wanted to see how the scene would turn out so this is a small revelation....

 

[40oz]

I think anyone who picks up a camera for personal reasons is an artist.

I think any pursuit that relies as much on human experience, skill, and desire as on pure technical exercise is inherently an art.

I think "street photography" is any photography that doesn't fit into nice clean pigeonholes like "landscape," "documentary," or "nature." (Although it probably really belongs under "nature shots" just like images of bees in a hive or beavers building a lodge 🙂 We are animals in our own environment, after all 😀 )

That means to me that "snapshots" are defined by the spontaneity of the shot, not the "lack of art." An "artless" snapshot of a grandmother, or of a little girl's birthday, can be as moving as a carefully constructed scene resulting from hours of painstaking craft. I don't think a conscious injection of "art" is a requirement for a good image. I do think it's important to consider what the shot will look like if one wants to be able to get what they want on film. I think the "art" is the result, not an ingredient, if that makes sense.

Nobody would argue that a napkin sketch of a birthday scene would be art, no matter how tossed off or spontaneous. By the same token, I can't agree that a doting mother with a P&S is less of an artist just because she is taking pictures of her daughter instead of park benches and liquor store customers. She surely can recognize the good ones from the bad, and consciously shares the ones she likes.

In fact, I would say the casual P&S user has a keen grasp of documentary photography, covering minor family events like a pro at a wedding, using a tool that allows them to focus on the event instead of the equipment 🙂