fjrwillie Loc: MA

How about CrapShoot :lol:

Willie

Graham Smith Loc: Cambridgeshire UK

Good idea. That's one we could all contribute too :lol:

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Hii, Willie,
That's a great suggestion for renaming this Section now erroneously called "Street Photography". Your experience has provided you a particularly apt perspective from which to recommend such an appropriate designation!
And I'm really glad to see you are taking this all in good spirit!
Best regards,
Dave

Billyspad Loc: The Philippines

No need to worry about Willie. He is one of the good guys

Macronaut Loc: Redondo Beach,Ca.

Well said. Thank you! :wink:

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Just keep in mind that Graham is specifically trying to deny that Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz are the most authoritative historians to date in regard to Street Photography. The rest of the world seems to think they are exactly that, and it is far more than just one or two people you'd find that agree said image is indeed Street Photography.

The definition given in Wikipedia also qualifies the image as Street. The old London Festival of Photography definition also qualifies it that way.

Ask yourself why anyone here would want to deny someone else's work as Street? Hmmm...

Here's an interesting interview to help understand what Street Photography is:

http://leicaliker.com/2012/11/02/13-kate-kirkwood-lake-district-united-kingdom-street-photographer/

Macronaut Loc: Redondo Beach,Ca.

I thought I had a pretty good idea of what street was. Even some things that pushed the definition (as I knew it). But, all these new definitions have truly blurred the line to say the least. I guess I will have to relearn what's what, because now It's so broad and all encompassing I'm really confused. :?

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

These are not new definitions! They are old. Very old.

Ever notice that the new people want to define Street as something that would be more like "urban photography". But tie that into the guys that caused such an idea: Meyerwitz, Frank, Fiedlander, Winogrand, and Cartier-Bresson. Note that several of them, most notably Cartier-Bresson and Winogrand, expressed rather extreme dislike for the term "Street Photography". Why?

They didn't mind what Street Photography actually is, but they really disliked it being misunderstood as urban photography. They were absolutely not taking pictures of streets, street activities, street people or anything necessarily related to streets. It bothered them that the purpose of their photography was totally being missed due to a title that was so commonly misused.

They were taking pictures of life and the relationships between people and their surroundings. The only connection to urban streets was the arbitrary fact that great examples of what they wanted were available in high density and high quality on the urban streets of NYC.

Here's something Meyerowitz said just a few years ago (2011 or 12), that has to be understood in context because it says more than you will immediately see:
The immediate thing for this discussion is that 5th Avenue was changing so fast all day long that he (and Winogrand and Friedlander) could keep going and going and going, and never run out of something new. The urban street just gushed up a steady stream of the subject matter they wanted. The same subject matter was available on a rural path, on a beach, inside many buildings, and other places. But it wasn't a gusher and they'd be finished and bored in half an hour.

But it's also an "insider joke" that plays on one of Winogrand's favorite ways of dumping on the idea he was taking pictures of streets:
Winogrand said essentially the same thing many times in many places. It isn't the urban streets, it's life that they photographed.

Prior to the middle 1900's it wasn't called Street Photography that often. People didn't suggest, until much later, that what Atget was doing should be called Street. Same with Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. In 1950 to most older people the term Street Photographer meant a portrait photographer working a single location, on an urban street, who would take your picture and later provide a print! That may have been a big part of what annoyed Winogrand...

Maybe your best bet for a good start would be a trip to the library to find a copy of "Bystander: A History of Street Photography".

blackest Loc: Ireland

Maybe this would be of interest

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/03/04/timeless-insights-you-can-learn-from-the-history-of-street-photography/

But that's by eric kim who you ridiculed earlier. An interesting snippit its a long article.

"Before I get started, I want to share an interesting anecdote of how I actually met Colin Westerbeck by chance. The program director for UC Riverside’s online program was at a dinner party, and randomly met Colin Westerbeck who mentioned that he was interested in photography.

She then mentioned to him that I was teaching a course on street photography. She then was surprised when Westerbeck told her that he wrote a book on the history of street photography (which I was using to create the course).

I met Westerbeck, he gave me some great guidance on my own street photography, signed my copy of Bystander, and helped me edit the final exhibition for the students of my UC Riverside class.

I can personally vouch that he is extremely knowledgeable about street photography, and that he is a very generous human being as well."

Unfortunately I very much doubt Westerbeck has such a relationship with apaflo.

http://leicaliker.com/2012/11/02/13-kate-kirkwood-lake-district-united-kingdom-street-photographer/

Interesting read but I think one of the elements that appears within her work is personality and her animals do have personality.

I think the street photography images that connect with me have personality "real people" "real locations" "real lives". That's what I like though not any kind of formal definition, it will do for me. I need an emotional connection something I feel when i view an image and that does not include "this is a really bad photograph".

I honestly do not believe you can take a bad photograph, label it street photography and it magically redeems itself. Most of us have room to improve some more than others. So what is this section to be about? Backslapping like the photo section or perhaps a more brutal but constructive section.

Ok my ramblings done.

jim hill Loc: Springfield, IL

Hey, blackest for president! Man, have you hit the nail right square in the butt.

Kepp on truckin'.

kruchoski Loc: Albuquerque, NM

I'll have to say, it's been interesting.

But the longer I look & 'listen,' the less interesting it's become. Sadly, since don't care much for labels or pigeonholes, I bid adeus. "Street" apparently is one very small & narrow window on "life." I'll get along with mine -- shooting what I like & lots of it.

Nightski

I do like it, Willie. I'm not crazy about the white vignetting, but that is personal preference. What I would suggest is that you crop a third from the bottom and about an eighth on the right. This way the image hones in on the lone girl sitting there with a very intriguing body posture. It also brings in the view of what the girl sees as she sits there. There seems to be no end to this flat, dry landscape. I like the feeling I get from it very much.

fjrwillie Loc: MA

Thank you for your suggestions and I will give them a try. The vignetting was more of bad PP than intent. (maybe I should not admit that)

Willie

blackest Loc: Ireland

Hard to miss a butt that size.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

I have come up with a scale of evaluation of posted images as to where, in my personal opinion, they fit on a scale extending between "Bystander Liberal Street" on the one hand , and "Authentic Traditional Street" on the other hand....also designated the BLS -ATS SCALE.

Those falling into the BLS range are those admitted to the realm of " Street" by the liberal criteria offered in the book "Bystander" which some accept as THE source of the gospel on Street Photography. On the other hand, those images which, IMO, are admitted to the designation of ATS are indisputably consonant with the image and spirit of Authentic Traditional Street as found in the bodies of work by the greats of the history of Street photography. These are readily accessed by Googling the names of such as Louis Hein, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and many others.

This particular image, "Waiting", IMO takes its place securely in the "Bystander Liberal Street" (BLS) class of images.

Dave