'Street Photography'

sjgslack said:
. . . All I mean is: there is a lot of it, and lots of it isn't any good. . . .
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Then again, there are lots of lots of things, lots of which aren't very good. I fully see your point that it's a pretty silly idea to put a pointless label on something and say that it's what you do, especially if you do it badly, but then again, as others have said, that is true not only of street photography and pretty much any other form of photography, but of life in general. It's the labelling, not the doing, that's silly. Again, this is true of many other things.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Then again, there are lots of lots of things, lots of which aren't very good. I fully see your point that it's a pretty silly idea to put a pointless label on something and say that it's what you do, especially if you do it badly, but then again, as others have said, that is true not only of street photography and pretty much any other form of photography, but of life in general. It's the labelling, not the doing, that's silly. Again, this is true of many other things.

Cheers,

R.
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Yes, it is indeed -- it's just a particularly prominent instance of it that gets my goat, that's all. But of course you are quite right 🙂
 
sjgslack said:
I wouldn't dream of telling people what they should be shooting, and of course none of it is needed aside from the fact that the practise of photography is perhaps more in need of good work than bad.

All I mean is: there is a lot of it, and lots of it isn't any good.

I've enjoyed reading this thread, and I agree with many above who have pointed out that the problem is less what I stated in the OP, and more to do with lack of editing and arbitrarily strict definitions.

I don't mean to insult anyone who calls themselves a street shooter, and I'm sure your work is good (though I've not seen it).
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Of course a lot of the results of any activity aren't very good. There are far more Minor Leaguers than Major Leaguers in any endevour, but even if the schleppers want to give themselves a label why should that bother anyone else. If you shoot birds exclusively, even really badly, then by definition you're a Bird Photographer. As for the editing? Yes we could use more, but if you're shooting dreck, all you be doing by editing is showing less dreck.
As for you assumption about my pictures, that isn't for me to say. If you're curious, and want to see some of my stuff, my hosting site is called Photochimps (www.photochimps.com) and if you go there and search for me (RBSinTo) in the Gallery you can see for yourself.
Robert
 
rbsinto said:
if you're shooting dreck, all you be doing by editing is showing less dreck.
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This is excellent - I may quote you 🙂

rbsinto said:
As for you assumption about my pictures, that isn't for me to say. If you're curious, and want to see some of my stuff, my hosting site is called Photochimps (www.photochimps.com) and if you go there and search for me (RBSinTo) in the Gallery you can see for yourself.
Robert
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I very much enjoyed looking at your pictures, thanks. There's loads of great stuff there. I particularly like the portraits (one of someone called Rueben caught my eye especially). It's lovely to see so many shots on slide film too.

I used Velvia for the first time in years whilst shooting my own wedding a few weeks ago - the colours are fantastic.
 
sjgslack said:
This is excellent - I may quote you 🙂


I very much enjoyed looking at your pictures, thanks. There's loads of great stuff there. I particularly like the portraits (one of someone called Rueben caught my eye especially). It's lovely to see so many shots on slide film too.

I used Velvia for the first time in years whilst shooting my own wedding a few weeks ago - the colours are fantastic.
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Please feel free to quote me, anytime.
And thanks for the kind words on my pictures.
Colour slide (mostly 100 ISO) is essentially all I shoot, using old, clunky, laughably outdated, hopelessly backward manual focus mostly mechanical Nikon rangefinders and SLRs.
 
rbsinto said:
Please feel free to quote me, anytime.
and thanks for the kind words on my pictures.
Colour slide (mostly 100 ISO) is essentially all I shoot, using old, clunky, laughably outdated, hopelessly backward manual focus mostly mechanical Nikon rangefinders and SLRs.
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Not easy to get the exposure right on E6 in those circumstances i imagine 🙂
 
I remember seeing a video of an interview with Ralph Gibson. He was making a point of how many images are being produced today. Maybe more in the last few years than all the two dimensional work in the history of all the two dimensional work up until that point. But how much of that work is good?

A lot of work I see taken on the street is just random shots of people on the street not knowing that they are being photographed with absolutely no regard for any of the elements that go into what is a good photograph.

I feel fortunate that I do see work posted here on this site in some of the street threads like the undead street that is good work by a few very good photographers.
 
sjgslack said:
Not easy to get the exposure right on E6 in those circumstances i imagine 🙂
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My fav transparency film was always Kodachrome 25 professional exposed about 1/3 stop under. Transparency film is in many ways a lot like shooting digital especially the M Mono. If you loose the highlights when exposing they are gone, unlike color negative film, which most have a very good latitude in the highlights.
 
sjgslack said:
Not easy to get the exposure right on E6 in those circumstances i imagine 🙂
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Whenever possible I try to set exposure based on experience, with my S3s, and SP rangefinders as well as my meterless F.
Although I do have bodies with meters (F2, FM, FA and CV R2S Bessa), I often override them anyway.
And for the really tricky situations there is always the Minolta Flashmeter III set to incident mode to help me out.

And I was also taught to underexpose my slide film to saturate the colours. Typically by about 1/3 of a stop.
 
rbsinto said:
Whenever possible I try to set exposure based on experience, with my S3s, and SP rangefinders as well as my meterless F.
Although I do have bodies with meters (F2, FM, FA and CV R2S Bessa), I often override them anyway.
And for the really tricky situations there is always the Minolta Flashmeter III set to incident mode to help me out.

And I was also taught to underexpose my slide film to saturate the colours. Typically by about 1/3 of a stop.
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Sometimes a meter can be a distraction. I find the meter in my M6 to be rather too centre weighted and have had to teach myself to ignore it apart from when metering off a particular place before composing the shot.

But i shoot mostly B&W so it's easy. I find E6 very easy to screw up exposure-wise.
 
Sparrow said:
... why on earth would anyone use a transparency film for street snapshots?
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Those portraits are more than snapshots, and they benefit from the beautiful colour saturation in my opinion.

If I had the cash I'd shoot more slides. And every person buying it helps to keep Fuji making it 🙂
 
Sparrow said:
... why on earth would anyone use a transparency film for street snapshots?
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"Everybody does what they do."
RBSinTo's Law

Because despite its rather narrow exposure latitude, after doing it for over 30 years, I feel most at home shooting colour slide, and only shoot negative film when I'm being paid or doing someone a favour.
Besides, if I chose to, I could convert the images to black and white when I scan.
 
I think that there are things that can still be added, creative ideas waiting to be photographed etc. I also hate the term "Street Photographer".

These days, I do agree to a certain extent that "Street Photography" is dead. But only when I compare it to how it used to be, in the golden age, or when cameras were not a common site. From HCB to Vivian Maier, you can see a lot of reactions on peoples face is pure. They are not jaded by cameras. A lot of looks are like, "Is...that a camera? Am I being photographed?" Some looks of bewilderment. Now days, some people get angry when being photographed as they think they are being exploited somehow. People protect their children. Everyone has a camera. It is pretty much the opposite of how it used to be.

That being said, I'm sure there still are areas of the world that are far less photographed. Maybe I should go and shoot north eastern Siberia. Actually that would be awesome. Things are different now, and as photographers we have to be more creative in our approach.
 
2WK said:
I think that there are things that can still be added, creative ideas waiting to be photographed etc. I also hate the term "Street Photographer".

These days, I do agree to a certain extent that "Street Photography" is dead. But only when I compare it to how it used to be, in the golden age, or when cameras were not a common site. From HCB to Vivian Maier, you can see a lot of reactions on peoples face is pure. They are not jaded by cameras. A lot of looks are like, "Is...that a camera? Am I being photographed?" Some looks of bewilderment. Now days, some people get angry when being photographed as they think they are being exploited somehow. People protect their children. Everyone has a camera. It is pretty much the opposite of how it used to be.

That being said, I'm sure there still are areas of the world that are far less photographed. Maybe I should go and shoot north eastern Siberia. Actually that would be awesome. Things are different now, and as photographers we have to be more creative in our approach.
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There are still issues in our society that can be explored. We always have to push the creative bar but this type of instantaneous work is what photography does best and a thing that no other art form can do as well. Thats capture a moment in time. This is also foreign to our real life experience. THere are ares right in our own town and cities that are waiting to be shown, not to imitate the past. but to capture our time and do it in a visual way that includes the visual elements that the one that came before and did it successfully included. Not to copy but to find our own way of interpreting this things for our place in time.
 
As others have noted, digital has facilitated a marked increase in the number of exposures taken, while the Internet has allowed easy dissemination of these photos. So now, not only do we see the festering meat trimmings, but there are also much more festering trimmings to be seen.

I understand how the influx of 'street shots' might appear to stand out, but if we look around, and again, as others have noted, similar trends can be witnessed in most any other genre.

When I first started taking candids, it required overcoming a psychological barrier (shyness/introversion) that still hinders me to some degree. The point is that the act of photographing a stranger stirred a certain excitement not repeated with other types of photography.

I suspect, and it's only an assumption, that in some cases, you have beginners who are just so giddy to overcome their inhibitions, that they show off their 'trophies' without realizing, or perhaps without caring, that others will view the same but with objective detachment and greater scrutiny. To stress, I'm only referring to a segment, but it's possibly something to consider.

I probably followed a similar path, where the sake of overcoming the challenge eventually lost its influence over the shutter release. As time has passed, deepening familiarity with the genre, as well as the repetitiveness of my own shots, have continually forced at least a desire for change, however stunted such evolutional aspirations might actually be.

For myself, I enjoy shooting objects outside, whether organic or not. I also like cities. Worse yet, I like black & white; can't help it. So my stuff invariably plops itself into the general presumptions of street, although I'm quite sure I would go through a similar routine if you shuttled me out to the rural hinterlands; just the subject matter would change. And yes, I would still be shooting Tri-X if I were traveling about India right during Holi.

My point is that whether annoyingly trendy or not; whether heavily afflicted by pretentious superficiality or not, or whether generally boring or not; I'm pretty much stuck doing what I like, because, it's what I like. And as a hobbyist, the freedom of self-indulgence is mine to enjoy. That doesn't mean I'm content with my specific work, but jumping out of a particular style just to be anti-fashion would ultimately be fashionable and forced.
 
sjgslack said:
Those portraits are more than snapshots, and they benefit from the beautiful colour saturation in my opinion.

If I had the cash I'd shoot more slides. And every person buying it helps to keep Fuji making it 🙂
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rbsinto said:
"Every body does what they do."
RBSinTo's Law

Because despite its rather narrow exposure latitude, after doing it for over 30 years, I feel most at home shooting colour slide, and only shoot negative film when I'm being paid or doing someone a favour.
Besides, if I chose to, I could convert the images to black and white when I scan.
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jsrockit said:
Why wouldn't they?
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... because it's like having intercourse standing up in a hammock ... possible; but not as much fun as doing it properly
 
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