who here considers themselves a 'street photographer'?

When I started doing photography in 1971, at least 80% was street photogaphy.

I still enjoy shooting in the street now. But I do more suburban/urban landscape/documentary stuff now. This thread made me realize I should make the effort to do more street work.
 
No, I am not a street photographer.
As a former anthropologist, I prefer social documentary photography that takes place on streets, roads, alleys, buildings, homes in ghettos, barrios, hoods, slums, projects, quarters located in cities, towns, villages and roadside rest stops.
I am a white boy who has lived/worked in Black neighborhoods (Fillmore, San Francisco, late 1960s) and worked in ghettos in Algiers, Louisiana doing voter registration, early 1960s).
I grew up in a barrio in West Texas/Mexico, 1940s to 50s, and now photograph exclusively in Segundo Barrio, El Paso.
I like street people, gangsters/hoods, earthy people, people with a story, down and out blues people with a life song about being here, the way it is, but most of all, just being ordinary.
No, I am not a street photographer.
 
jsrockit said:
I photograph mostly on the street, but many would not consider me a street photographer. Street photography (as defined by the internet) is too narrow for my taste and needs. It's a genre tag that is unnecessary.
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Why would you care about how "the internet" defines it?
 
I am a camera photographer! :D Sometimes. Like many of you, judging by the contents of this forum... ;)

And no, I'm not a street photographer. It's more or less impossible in this little place where I live. I would prefer to call myself a travelling photographer, so that's what I aim for.
 
I do. I feel home on street. And do not throw stones on me, I find SLR more convinient . Yet Olympus 35 trip and my Zorkii 4 plus FED 3 are nice tools too. :))
 
The place a shoot the most are the streets but i like everything else too... The most happening is for me on the streets.
 
Another reason why I won't label myself a "street photographer."

Rules

“I didn’t write the rules — why should I follow them?"
W. Eugene Smith


And I don't listen to my wife either...
(except sometimes)
 
I really dislike the term "street photography", it's such a hype now with blogs like Eric Kim's. (I don't even mind him, he's the smart one by using "street photography" in SEO to promote his blog and organise these weird workshops).

All this talk on how to "shoot street" and what the rules are. It really got to me in a bad way. I love to read about photography, also online, but I don't really know where to look anymore. It's all about either these weird lists of rules, or gear discussions.
I think for a few years my photos have been perfectly within the borders of this "street" label, but it being overused actually makes me want to do it less!

I want to try to become a social photographer (please don't make a label out of this), interacting more with people, and telling more of a story. There still is a long way to go though.

So yeah, I guess my answer is "no", though most of my photos clearly show "yes"!
 
What started as street photography has developed into observing and photographing people anywhere - inside or outside. Capturing people interacting with each other or just expressing a mood in they way they behave and feel is what it is all about for me. This is where the rangefinder excels, IMHO.

Ray
 
I forever find Myself on the Street
Shooting / Documenting Buildings, People, Life in Motion

For Me Life is One Big Street...:eek:...:D
 
i hate the term - it strikes me as a self-impressed, faux-working-class/faux-underclass, anti-intellectualistic emblem - but it describes a lot of what i try to do (although i shoot a lot indoors). when i talk to people about what i shoot, i say something like "i try and take candid or intimate pictures of people." or if it's another photographer, i say "street, but i hate the term." that said, i end up shooting geometrics sometimes, nature sometimes. i really try to get people in my photos but sometimes moments and stories aren't about people. i'm not pretentious enough - or professional in this way - to call myself a photojournalist, but that's where a lot of my aesthetic sensibility comes from.
 
kossi008 said:
Definitely not. I do shoot 80% or more of my pictures on the streets, but it's still not street. And that's not because I don't like the label...
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This mostly describes me. I live in Boston, and since I tend to carry a camera with me while walking around I inevitably wind up shooting what's around me. So I suppose by default I shoot a bunch of street scenes. But it's not a genre I think I am all that good at, or one that I particularly seek out. It's more out of lack of anything else around me. If I lived in the mountains, for example, I'd shoot more landscapes.

If wish I had the courage to shoot more portraits of strangers. Not strangers walking down the street or standing around ignorant to my camera--I find much of that boring. But actual portraits--and gritty ones at that. Like Vivian Maier's.
 
"Street photography" is how I distill what I'm doing for the benefit of potential subjects, bartenders, shop owners, hotel security persons, customs officials, the police, and those unfortunates about to be collaterally damaged and irrevocably scarred by my iPad's Black & White album at cocktail parties. It accurately describes a lot of the why and what I shoot frames of.

Am I a street photographer? Sure. Yes. Often.

Am I strictly or exclusively a street photographer? I friggin' hope not.
 
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