The Street

[Bill Pierce]

You can do street photography any time you feel like walking the streets. You don’t even have to have streets. You can walk shopping malls. In California I shoot on piers where people enjoy the ocean and the amusements on the larger piers. You can do it with small and relatively economical cameras. Technical perfection isn’t necessary for street photography. You are not in control of what is in front of you; so, you shoot a lot, throw away the trash and make fairly straight forward prints or screen jpgs. All in all, it’s a very democratic form of photography and an enjoyable one. So I thought I would relay Kai W’s latest post - which is on street photography. And for those of you who had wondered where Kai had gone - now you know. Would love to hear your thoughts on street photography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk_71Hujl3Q

 

[dugrant153]

I love photographing on the "street" or whereever I am and observing people. I see myself as a sociologist with a camera rather than a "street photographer". Being able to blend artistic photography with the random nature of the street is quite a thrill... but also quite scary at the same time. I try to stay away from confrontation as that's the kind of person I am.

My main question is about publishing... How do you know when it is right to publish an image? And how far can you take it? It's hard to ask for a "sign off" from every single person in the photo. I think the USA is a bit more lax. Canada is not bad but some rules are a bit undetermined?

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

Edit: I enjoy street photography.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

What was OP about? To tell us where one guy who was handling cameras like he is going to drop it went? So, he went Kim shiny road. How exciting...
And he finded couple of studges to tell something we already seen on shiny road of Kim.
How even more exciting....
And why you have to shot a lot? Because Winogrand did? Or because you don't know what to do and just switching camera to automatic assault wapon mode? Sounds like fun!...

I went on the street after work today. Sun was right, people were plenty. My frame counter told me it was five. By the time I have to run to Go Station, I think, I reached 15.
I don' think I have any for print. But I'm satisfied. I have seen at least two were I had to work to get print, but I had big chunk of broadcast equipment in very big bag over my shoulder...
Why satisfied? First, because every time I get chance to walk on busy street it is privilege after work, which is luxury here for many. Second, is because I was not mass producing something empty.
But maybe next time I'll drop pancake on digital and work its battery out 🙂.

Best one o one on the street I have seen so far was in interview with late HCB.
He gave it best and he gave it short. "Geometry and something".

How you dress, what you told yourself is irrelevant. If you still afraid of people it helps you.
But they still see you, if they are not busy enough for good shot...
And even if they see you? Are you afraid to be seen? Why? In Canada it is totally legal as long as you are in public space and not breaking into privacy.

 

[LCSmith]

Ninety percent of the photography I do is street photography. I am in New York one day and Philadelphia one day every week only to do street photography.

A *good* street photograph is inimitable, literally. It cannot be reproduced. The moment has come and you have either grabbed it or you haven't. That specific moment in time with those specific players interacting in that specific way in that specific light will never happen again.

A good street photograph is therefore entirely unique as an artistic form. In my opinion it is the highest achievement of photography because no other medium can do it. It is also the most difficult type of photography to do well and therefore, in my opinion, the most worthy of pursuit.

 

[Rick Waldroup]

double post

 

[Rick Waldroup]

Ninety percent of the photography I do is street photography. I am in New York one day and Philadelphia one day every week only to do street photography.

A *good* street photograph is inimitable, literally. It cannot be reproduced. The moment has come and you have either grabbed it or you haven't. That specific moment in time with those specific players interacting in that specific way in that specific light will never happen again.

A good street photograph is therefore entirely unique as an artistic form. In my opinion it is the highest achievement of photography because no other medium can do it. It is also the most difficult type of photography to do well and therefore, in my opinion, the most worthy of pursuit.

I have made a living with a camera- photojournalism, architectural photography for many years, I've shot weddings, done event photography- but the hardest thing I have ever done is street photography. Now, being semi-retired, it is about the only type of photography I do. It is demanding, frustrating at times, but the rewards are rich when you finally see the results when you get it right in your mind's eye.

 

[LCSmith]

It is demanding, frustrating at times, but the rewards are rich when you finally see the results when you get it right in your mind's eye.

Agreed.

Nothing is so easy as a bad street photograph, and nothing so difficult as a good one.

 

[sjones]

I was living in Bangkok when I decided to pursue photography more seriously. I didn’t know what a rangefinder was; I never heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson; and I don’t think I was familiar with the term “street photography.” All I knew is that I was naturally motivated to go outside and photograph my surroundings, which happened to be urban.

As I coursed my way through the history of photography, I also found particular interest in Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, William Eggleston, and others who focused on humanity (somewhat ironic given my quasi-misanthropy and introversion). Of course, I enjoyed photographs from all other genres, as a good photograph is a good photograph. But “street”, in all of its semantical ambiguity, was my fit.

That is, I love cities, and I love photographing them.

This said, street photography, right down to the term itself, is one of the most scrutinized and criticized of all photographic styles: Its proliferation over the past decade, its artsy pretense that garners online praise for uninspired simplicity, its rude intrusiveness, its fawning derivativeness, its banality…so much hostility.

Some of the criticism is legitimate, most of it can be applied to all styles of photography, while a good chunk of it is so ridiculous that it’s tantamount to chastising portrait photography for showing too many faces, landscape for showing too many mountains, and wildlife for showing too many animals.

But whether the vilification is warranted or not, urban photography, or photography of life, is what I’m going to do...ain't no generalist in this matter.

 

[sjones]

...A *good* street photograph is inimitable, literally. It cannot be reproduced. The moment has come and you have either grabbed it or you haven't. That specific moment in time with those specific players interacting in that specific way in that specific light will never happen again....

Which is why, in regards to candids, that when someone advocates getting permission first, they're missing a crucial point; perhaps the whole point.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Which is why, in regards to candids, that when someone advocates getting permission first, they're missing a crucial point; perhaps the whole point.

Agree and to expand a bit on this from my perspective; one thing photograph does that no other art form can do is freeze a moment in time for us to contemplate. Photography is an abstract from our human experience. We live on constant motion. It's very fluid.

A photograph and especially a really good photograph when someone is shooting candidly on the the streets as Bresson, Winogrand, Frank, Erwitt have done find interesting moments that happen in fractions of seconds. Really good work in this area is a lot more than people just taken on the street without their knowledge.

In my opinion there needs to be more there. Some kind of humor (Erwitt) or foreground, background relationship (Bresson) or even things that are mirrors of who we are as a society at that moment in time (Frank and Winogrand).

A photograph is also 2 dimensional and for most our human experience is 3 dimensional. Some times a photograph can be B&W which is also abstract to most human experience.

I also agree with a comment made earlier that a really good photograph taken candidly on the street is a true one of kind. It was in the moment and that moment will never be repeated exactly the same candidly again. That is also what really one thing (there are many others) excites me about this type of work.

I also have been supporting the family with photograph for a few decades. I have been shooting commercial/advertising professionally for a long time and a lot of that work is pre-planned and a collaboration. When I go out to do work just for me the type of candid work we have been talking about here is a refreshing break form all the control that is in a lot of my pro work. This type of candid work (as mentioned) can be so frustrating. Turn left and it is a target rich environment. Turn right and it is a day of nothing but frustration. And some days I can see. I see photographs everywhere and some days nothing. The vision just isn't there. And then there is the timing. I do notice if I haven't been out for a while it is off and can take some time to get it. So like has been said that when it does work, man it is addictive and keeps me getting out there every chance I can get. Without my personal work I would have been burned out a decade or two ago.

 

[Out to Lunch]

[FONT=&quot]I like Kai W’s YouTube blogs: he is unpretentious, he has a good sense of humor and he knows something about cameras and lenses. Whenever I walk around in Ho Chi Minh City, the memory of the ‘masters’ of the street photography genre are not on my mind. I don't live in the forties and fifties and the street is forever changing. [/FONT]

 

[willie_901]

My main question is about publishing... How do you know when it is right to publish an image? And how far can you take it? It's hard to ask for a "sign off" from every single person in the photo. I think the USA is a bit more lax. Canada is not bad but some rules are a bit undetermined?

I have no idea about Canada.

In the US you can publish freely for editorial use. Editorial use covers all usage that is non-commercial.

Commercial usage is typically considered advertising. You use someone's image to imply endorsement of a product or service. Commercial usage is legal with a model or property release. Minors can not sign a model release.

Editorial usage means you can sell prints, books or other works that fall within free speech – which includes artistic expression.

In the US you can not violate someone'e expectation of privacy. In some jurisdictions the legal standard for expectation of privacy is based on the privacy you would expect behind closed doors. In general, anyone in a public space (even on private property) has no expectation of privacy. You can not photograph when trespassing. You can not publish works that defame someone.

More restrictive US laws limiting making and publishing photographs for editorial usage are passed form time to time. As far as I know, all of tykes have not held up under appeal.

Often individuals voluntarily impose subjective limitations on editorial usage. Sometimes this sort of self-regulation is incorrectly used tp judge others.

 

[LCSmith]

[FONT=&quot]Whenever I walk around in Ho Chi Minh City, the memory of the ‘masters’ of the street photography genre are not on my mind. I don't live in the forties and fifties and the street is forever changing. [/FONT]

The last thing I want to be is polemical, so please understand that I do not take issue with you individually; but something you said does interest me quite a bit.

You hear a lot of this sort of thing from photographers of a certain generation, "I don't live in the forties and fifties" and "don't dwell too much on the masters." Now, I get that. To be sure, one desires to articulate one's own vision of the genre; but the masters are the ones who showed us what is possible, what may be done in those environments with a camera. We learn from masters. Just "going out and doing your own thing" without being in dialogue with the greater genre as a whole, a genre which was defined by specific photographs and photographers, is an exercise in solipsism. Imagine if painters followed this kind of advice, to "go do your own thing." We would still be drawing horses on the walls of caves.

I do not have any sympathy for artists who create in a vacuum because such a thought is ipso facto a prevarication. Art at its greatest is transmissive. What we love about great art is transmitted to our own sensibilities and drives us to do likewise.

I should also say that your remark "the streets are always changing" is spot on, and precisely why street photography, even if done in style of the masters, can still be fresh and inimitable as the new day.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Very often people who have seen my prints are asking - are those old photographs?
And those are recent prints from Toronto.
People of all ages are dressing like in fifties in Russia. I have no idea why it is so massive and from where clouthes, shoes and else are coming from.

I have seen good level photography on the streets and documentary candids from Vietnam here on RFF. I think some of photographers were highlighted by Leica blog, but by now it doesn't matter if master status was aplied.
If you look around high level of street photography is available more than before.
Not KimKai gear, blogs about oriented level of photography, photographers but true masters like Junku.

 

[cz23]

It's been my preferred genre for many years, but I'm reconsidering that now. Mainly for its intrusiveness and the way so many folks feel about being photographed in public. I can be bold or sly, and mostly go unnoticed, but am still uneasy about the unasked-for intrusion.

Trouble is, I don't know of a subject more interesting or rewarding than human beings living their lives. So now I shoot at greater distance, with less focus on people and more on light and setting and composition.

John

 

[kbg32]

I do not care much for the term/label "street photography". I am an "urban" photographer.

 

[Darthfeeble]

I just love it, but I'm so self conscious that I have to resort to the dreaded stealth method.

 

[airfrogusmc]

[FONT=&quot]I like Kai W’s YouTube blogs: he is unpretentious, he has a good sense of humor and he knows something about cameras and lenses. Whenever I walk around in Ho Chi Minh City, the memory of the ‘masters’ of the street photography genre are not on my mind. I don't live in the forties and fifties and the street is forever changing. [/FONT]

They shouldn't be in your mind when working but influences are and always will be part of the fabric of who we all are as photographers. We don't live in vacuums.

 

[Dogman]

Although I do take pictures of people, I'm really more interested in social artifacts. When I photograph people, I avoid intruding or being confrontational.