jan normandale said:
...This thread is about a form of photography that has been identified as an art.
For me, I call it "opportunistic photography" rather than "street" because that is a whole lot easier to define and much less contentious. I don't think of it as an art as such.
Even the term opportunistic is something of a misnomer because you end up creating your own opportunities. You can't really wait for luck, you need to create it.
As to what type of pictures fit into the category, I don't see the purpose of restriction. Why not pictures of cows? For some people cows are their life, their street. The street that I personally live in doesn't look much like the typical street shot from New York either. But I live in the suburbs where normally there is nobody about. A few cars maybe. So in order to see things that I mightn't ordinarily see I jump on the train to the centre of town and look for people or situations that interest me. After shooting a few rolls on each type of thing I get bored and look for something else. Because I do this for my own enjoyment the result (at least at the time of shooting) doesn't have much bearing on what I do. I have a purely mechanical approach to "street".
When I get home i process the film, scan, look over what I have. It is there that I look for something interesting. I may have witnessed something funny, interesting or whatever but how well did that translate to the film? Did I stuff up? Quite often there won't be much.
I don't care too much if I get 1 useful shot per roll or 20. There are times when I am hugely inspired when everything seems to work. There are times when nothing seems to work. Spending a lot of time worrying about some guy holding the shutter button down doesn't strike me as useful. Why would I care how that guy does it? I like talking to other 'rangefinder shooters' because I know they are more serious than all-auto shooters about the physical technique. I can learn that from them.
The way I do it and see it, opportunistic photography is about predicting a situation, preparing, waiting for it and then hitting the button at the correct time. In those circumstances all-auto is surprisingly little advantage. Auto-focus is next to useless. Motor-wind (or holding the button down) is actually no use at all, there is only one shot to take and you need to make sure you have it at the correct point in time. Auto-exposure is kinda sometimes useful but you have to know a lot about how your camera behaves to know how to use it., otherwise use manual. Anti-shake isn't going to work except on long lenses and then you have composition problems usually.
Sorry for the jumble of ideas and the rant. I'll continue reading for now
🙂
Thanks,
James
