Street Photography

I, for one, do not think you have to have people in a photo for it to be a street photo. I photograph on the street daily. However, 75% of my photos do not include people. I consider what I do street photography anyway. However, my feelings wouldn't be hurt if someone said it wasn't. It's kind of a genre term that has lost its punch. It is funny to read each person's definition though... some really have a very narrow view of what the genre encompasses.
 
I think the definition is as good as there is.

My favourite place is "anywhere there are people". Sometimes I like to shoot a lone person on the steps of a cathedral, other times a football crowd. My shots are candid insofar as I seldom go and wave my camera in someone's face to prooke a reacion (a la Bruce Gilden).

Then again, I don't hide the camera or pretend I'm doing anythhing other than taking a photo. If I catch someone's eye, I sile and ask if it's okay to take the photo - that's just the way I was brought up. If the answer's no,. then I move on.

Recognising the "decisive moment" is, for me, what differentiates good candid / street shooting from the stuff that I do. That and having the skill to compose, focus and hit the "go" button almost instinctively.
 
For me personally, I would define street photography as: taking photos of scenes of street live. With a small appendix called street portrait.
And street photography as its best is becoming part of the scene, you photograph.

Without live it's architecture photography, or not?
 
Bill: I like your definition. The best of the breed either gives you the sense that you understand something of the subjects and their time/place that you did not before or poses an interesting juxtaposition.

Personally, I do not particularly like photos of tourists. Although in a place like New York or London every street light will bring together a random collection of individuals who are highly unlikely to be in the same place again.
 
Colin Corneau said:
-- finding deeper meaning and commonality from the flow of daily existence...
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I've been somewhat curious about this kind of idea for some time now. I love making images of street scenes. However I know full well that I'm most often creating a fiction when I frame a scene, leaving out what I choose, cropping backgrounds and foregrounds that may or may not be a 'truthful' representation of the moment. And I might even use black and white film to add even more drama. Thus I may have created my own "deeper meaning" that has little to do with what was actually happening at that moment.

So I suspect that much of the street photography we see presented on the web is really more about the meanings created in the photographer's mind, rather than the objective reality of the moment. But then maybe this is obvious, and I'm just blathering. :rolleyes:
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Bill: I like your definition. The best of the breed either gives you the sense that you understand something of the subjects and their time/place that you did not before or poses an interesting juxtaposition.

Personally, I do not particularly like photos of tourists. Although in a place like New York or London every street light will bring together a random collection of individuals who are highly unlikely to be in the same place again.
Click to expand...

... like a snapshot?
 
Your definition works for me. My favorite place is the Seattle Public Library, the Rem Koolhaas design that went up a few years ago. Even in the lousiest weather, there are a ton of people taking pictures of it, with cameras ranging from cell phones to the odd view camera. So I collect pictures of the people shooting the library. I work next door to it--it's like fishing with dynamite.
 
Sparrow said:
... like a snapshot?
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Hmm. No (although I may not have my irony detector finely tuned enough . . .). My definition of a snapshot is a casually framed photograph primarily intended to memorialize a person or place. With a random collection of strangers on a street corner, no one in that group intends to juxtipose himself with any other. Folks are just going to work, or heading back from lunch or what have you. A good photographer can take that random assemblage of people and present them to a viewer in a way to suggest that there is meaning (irony, social commentary, pathos etc.) in the random collection of individuals. The pedestrians are making the moment, but the photographer is giving it meaning. The very best photographers tell us something about ourselves in how they present this slice of life.
 
... I always call my own stuff snapshots (without any irony in this instance) ... but then our Henri wanted to title his book that ... it was the publisher who came with that Decisive Moment guff ... I'll stick with Snapshot, it avoids all that pretentious artiste statement twaddle
 
i generally am too deliberate to call my photos snapshots. now, once i have deliberated, i frame and shoot quickly. :)
in any case, i don't shoot much "street" simply because i live so far away from any decent-sized cities. birmingham is only 24 miles away, but it is not much of a walking city except around the university/medical center. even there, the sidewalks are never crowded as in manhattan.

also, because the subject has come up, i personally don't mind at all being associated with firearms and/or hunting ...
 
thanks, jsr. interesting reading.
i am deliberate because i like control. frenetic activity usually puts me off the creative beam.
i like to think sometimes that i compose as if i'm using a large format cam, but use a 35mm cam/x100 for convenience. i do like to travel light ...
 
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