Good post John. I shoot there (on the streets) because I am addicted to the free form, jazz like quality, of working on the street. Making some kind of visual sense out of chaos. Like say a jazz musician you take what your influences are and a dash of this a little of that mix it all up and try to make it yours in some way and do it spontaneously. I feel that if you are to a point where people start recognizing work as yours before they see who took the photograph you are starting to get there.
I think that a lot of folks that rip on the genre are usually ones that don't like or understand it. Many that are photographers that don't like it are photographers that want to plan a shoot and they want to direct it like it's a movie. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and I do some of that during the week. It's my job to work with others to get what the client wants. Maybe it's the total freeform aspect of the streets that I find interesting.
But when you hit the streets it takes a very different sensitivity to be able to see it in the moment and then have the skill to capture what you have just seen. It's not perfect and in reality the perfect photograph has not been taken, though I would argue that Frank, Winogrand, Weston, Adams and a few others came pretty close. And in really it becomes more about bodies of work and how that work relates, in some way, to the creator.
I agree that as long as we are pushing our vision and trying not to repeat ourselves and still retain a bit of something that makes it ours it is definitely good. We take all that we have learned and all those that have influenced us and in some way and try and make it our own.
