1. People as a part of the urban landscape
2. People going about their business, completely unaware (or forgetting!) that they are being photographed.
3. People reacting to being confronted by the camera/photographer
4. People "allowing" their photo to be taken (going about their business, but aware of the camera).
5. People cooperating in an impromptu environmental portrait

I figured I'd have some fun with this list and try to provide examples of each of these types of street photography.

In order to make the continuity of this post a bit better, I'm going to rearrange the list and put number 5 after number 1. These two I feel deserve to be side by side as photographer's mentality is probably somewhat different from a photographer who is shooting with the other three methods. Unlike the middle three classifications, number 1 and 5 are methods of street photography which are slower working. The photographer has an opportunity to carefully compose the scene, and in the case of environmental portrait, manipulate the subject a little bit to help the composition.

1. People as a part of the urban landscape

Stephen Shore was the first photographer to pop into my mind for this categorization. Like a good landscape photographer he lugs around a massive 8x10 camera to do his photography, most of which is done in an urban environment. While he doesn't seem to focus on humans in his urban landscapes, he still does include them if present as part of the image.

Stephen Shore

5. People cooperating in an impromptu environmental portrait

Not sure I like the environmental portrait part of this description. When I hear environmental portrait, I think of the large volume of photography I've seen where photographers take a large format camera out on the street. The results are pretty often the same—dead pan head shots of people smiling at the camera.

The two photographers I've come across recently who I feel can do this, and not make the photograph be forgettable were Greg Miller and Joel Sternfeld. Coincidently, they also work with 8x10 cameras like Stephen Shore. I've felt first hand the power that a simple 4x5 camera wields over potential subjects. I really have no doubt that their choice of 8x10 makes the process of getting people to cooperate that much easier.

Joel Sternfeld

Greg Miller

3. People reacting to being confronted by the camera/photographer

Sometimes, this may just happen expectantly. For example, a photographer starts framing a scene while the subject is in a state of total oblivion to him. The moment before the exposure is to be made they might realized what is going down and show a reaction.

Other times, such as when Bruce Gilden goes out to shoot, the interaction/reaction is key component of the art.

2. People going about their business, completely unaware (or forgetting!) that they are being photographed.

This one, along with number 4, I think are the absolute hardest to differentiate between each other by viewing a single image. For number 2 I'm using this image by Matt Stuart.

I choose this image mainly because of a quote I remember about it by Matt posted on Blake Andrew's blog.

I shot around 15 frames of the scene then left and nobody noticed me at all.

Without that bit of insider information from the photographer, could we really know that this photo wasn't a group of friend he was tagging along with, or other people who knew he was there taking photos?

4. People "allowing" their photo to be taken (going about their business, but aware of the camera).

Another tricky one to decipher from a single photography without additional information.

One of my favorite Garry Winogrand photos is the one from New York in 1968 that depicts a laughing woman holding a half eaten ice cream cone.

From this single image alone could you discern whether or not the woman was aware of Winogrand or not? I always assumed it was a type 2 photograph. Then I bought Figments From The Real World and I now believe it may be a type 4. Along side of the more famous photo are a few more of the same woman and a man from various angles. It seems very likely that they were well aware of his presence, and just let him do his thing.

Another photographer who comes to mind regarding this type of shooting is Jaques Henri-Lartige. Throughout Album of a Century we often see the same named characters appear in his street photos throughout the years. Obviously family & friends who would most likely know he is always taking photos, and don't care about their own inclusion. Here are two of his wife Bibi.

These are just my initial gut reactions to each type of street photography and are obviously just a drop in the hat to the total number of photographer who could be classified under each of these headings. If you read any of the descriptions and had any different immediate reaction of a photographer who's work would fit one of the classifications, shout them out in the comments below.

Book List

Select publications from the aforementioned artists in this post.

• Stephen Shore - Uncommon Places
• Joel Sternfeld - Stranger Passing
• Lartigue - Album of a Century
• Garry Winogrand - Figments From The Real World

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

I have a request for you. If you ever happenstance come across and accident that I was involved in, and it is obvious that my survival isn't dependent on your immediate response, take a photograph. Better yet, make a photograph. Grab your 8x10. Use a tripod. Make long exposures so that the smoke looks dreamy. Anything, just make it awesome.

I imagine that a lot of people when stumbling across a scene of carnage will sheepishly take a quick, terrible photograph and move on, if they take one at all. Even though all the human instinct in the world makes them want to stare and keep shooting, they still might feel that their action might make them a douchebag for exploiting my misery and suffering for their gain.

Consider this. My car is totaled and my insurance premiums are about to go up. I might have some broken bones that will never set properly giving me aches for life. My insurance provider may rule that since I had the sniffles once in sixth grade, that they should drop my coverage for rehabilitation leaving me in financial ruin.

The check for my misery is already in the mail. If someone were to be on the sidelines and managed to make a really excellent piece of artwork out of the misery that I can't back out of, I'd be happier knowing that at least one small good thing came out of the situation.

If you'll do this for me, than I'll do the same thing for you. Just don't try to charge me if I want a copy of the print. Then you'd be a douchebag. It cost me a lot to set up that scene for you.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

One of the vintage photography books that I have on my bookshelf is Press Photography For the Freelance by Kip Ross. The book was published in 1941, and is mostly a technical manual for press photography at the time. The bulk of it is discussion on topics regarding the photographic technology of the period which is largely irrelevant now in 2011. Negatives for engraving. Flash Bulbs. Benefits between a 4x5 negatives vs 3.25 x 4.25 negatives for a reporter. That kind of stuff.

However, once I ignored the dated technology talk, I found quite a few gems of advice that are still very applicable seventy years later in 2011.

Magic Qualities

Too often, however, photographers are inclined to attach some magic qualities to camera equipment and to feel that if a famous prize-winning news shot was produced with a certain kind of camera, their own possession of similar equipment will enable them also to obtain great pictures. ~Kip Ross p.32

My gut instinct tells me that this truism has only become more and more tempered over the past seventy years. I mean, really, this was written more than a decade before the Leica M series was introduced.

Cry With Them

If you like to watch others, like to laugh with them, cry with them, joint with them in things they do, and at the same time can retain a little of the feeling of being a bystander in sensing the dramatic possibilities and angles in what they are doing, then you'll have no trouble in press photography. ~ Kip Ross p.12

I like to swap street photography in for press photography on this quote. I feel that it compliments my recent positioning of working as a visible street photographer instead of one who sneaks in the shadows.

Moving unaware is one way to shoot a subject candidly. But to gain their trust, and then having them forget about your presence provides an incredible freedom to search for a much deeper level of candid photography.

Normal and Natural

Usually these dramatic actions are the most normal and natural under all circumstances—so normal, in fact, that only the alert photographer will see the picture values in them, while others are going after the more theatrical angles of the event. ~Kip Ross p.91

My longstanding sound-byte about shooting any event has been "Find where every other photographer is pointing their camera at, and then walk in the opposite direction to find the true soul of the event." This is more or less the same sentiment.

A Simple Air of Confidence.

The passport to the inner circle where events are taking place is generally a simple air of confidence and a camera in the hand. p.25

To modernize this one, I'd probably change it to say "...and a serious looking camera in hand." Given that this was written in 1941 when everyone didn't have a small point & shoot or camera phone on them at all times, just having a camera was probably an indicator that the photographer wasn't just a gawker. Now that everyone has one at all times, we need something that stands out from the crowd.

But really, I've experienced this first hand plenty of times. Switching to my medium format Fuji last year has been opening this door quite frequently as it looks very serious and intimidating to the layman. A few months back at one event I realized I wouldn't get any photos I'd like from the spectator's area. My camera was the biggest one there, so I just confidently walked up to where the newspaper photographers had access to and stayed out the way while doing my thing. Not a single person questioned me, and I ended up with much more satisfying set of images than I otherwise would have gotten.

I'd love to say that appearance doesn't matter, but many times it just does. I don't think I could have stayed that close for the entire event had I been nervously using an iPhone.

Even aside from situations where dodgy gate-jumping ethics are involved, developing an air of confidence is probably one of the best things a street photographer can do for their work. No matter the situation, projecting a feeling that you are supposed to be there goes quite a long way.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

1. News article, blog post, or forums discussion about Street Photography starts.
2. Avalanche of comments from people who say they could never do Street Photography because they are too scared of getting punched, or too scared of getting their gear smashed, or worst of all, being forced to delete an image.

Do these things happen? Of course. Does it happen at a rate that any serious street photographer should just stay indoors? Doubtful.

Compared to other activities which are considered socially acceptable, I feel like Street Photography is rather safe way to spend my time. Digging around in the tubes for a bit gives me these numbers regarding a few common pastimes which are popular in my neck of the woods.

American Football: 33 Fatalities between 2000-2007. 460,000 injuries in 2006.

Cheerleading: ...approximately 25,000 cheerleaders ended up in the emergency room in 2007

Snowmobiling: 21 fatalities in the 2009/2010 season in Wisconsin alone.

Skateboarding: Do I even need numbers?

Street Photography: Occasional boo-hoo forum post followed by social media outrage any time a stranger so much as asks a street photographer what they are up to.

My money that the biggest injury risk most street photographers face is a black and blue ego when some cop or bystander doesn't fully understand that a Leica M9 should be taken as a big sign that says "Leave me alone!"

Really, I remember there was that one incident in about `07 or `08 where a guy got punched when he took a photo on a subway escalator, and then used the photo he took of the guy to track him down to bring assault charges. (Ack! Can't find link) Aside from that, rarely do I ever seem to come across a story where altercations actually get physical. Excluding situations where there is an elevated risk for everyone involved, such as war zones and riots, I don't think I've come across any account where the act of Street Photography has left the photographer with wounds worse than anything in the aforelinked skateboarding videos. (Please link me to any articles if you have seen them.)

I can think of a few non-war photographer deaths in recent years. But all of those were cases of either unfortunate luck, or not paying close enough attention in potentiality dangerous urban exploration environments. None came as a result of the human subjects of the photographs getting violent.

While I have received verbal threat from people on the street multiple times, I myself am yet to be punched or have my gear smashed. Sometimes though, I feel that a bloody nose or black eye would be quicker and less painless experience than my own boo-hoo moment when a police officer was publicly accusing me of being a threat to woman and a child predator in front of the general public. The whole Photographers who aren't landscapists must be perverted terrorists looking to snatch your children in the night angle is one that I do fear and let get to me. That subject is several posts in it self though, so I'll stay away for now.

I will say this though—every time I hit the street I am fully aware and accepting to the fact that I might get swatted at. I'm also well aware that the gear I have slung over my shoulder may not make it home if Lady Chance sees fit to frown at me on that given day. I think as a street photographer, one needs to look at these risks in the same way that the skateboarder looks at a skinned knee. Expect them at some point, and If you can't, stick to photographing mountains. They never care. Just don't fall off a cliff.

Have you ever been attacked?

Have any of you photographers out there actually ever been physically attacked due to your art? If so, what were the extents of your injuries?

Unrelated photo from my archives of a tough looking individual in a very small town who surprisingly didn't beat the snot out of me after I took his photo from a few feet away without asking.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

Hide your eyes if you are prudish and are sensitive to thoughts of sexual nature.

"Comparing the processes, film feels more like the anticipation of having sex with a beautiful woman in a luxurious and comfortable room while digital is like the anticipation of a quick handjob in a dirty alley."

~ Thanos Siozos in discussion thread in the Hardcore Street Photography Flickr Group.

And now, to give this post some color, here is a photo I created in a luxurious and comfortable room back in March.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

Back in 1972 if you wanted to share a stack of fifty photos with someone, did you have to provide a title for every single image? I don't believe so, but if any old timers want to chime in, please do.

These days the method I use to title a photo is fairly straight forward. If I can think of something clever within ten seconds up looking at a photo, I use that. If not, I just give a very literal and unbiased description of what is being depicted in the image. A Man With A Brace Watches A Tall Ship or A Swimmer Swims for example. Or the following photo which I've titled An Empty Bus Stop.

As a fun experiment, I thought I'd see how many additional methods I could utilize to title the same photo. Lets have some fun shall we?

The Stephen Shore

This titling strategy is a simply the location and date of the photograph. Named in honor of Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places.

E 4th Street, Duluth, Minnesota. December 12th, 2010

Gearhead's Delight

Why bother making the title have any relevance to what is actually depicted in the photograph when you can use it to squeeze out every last technical spec about the equipment used to create the photo?

Fuji GW690III. 90mm EBC Fujinon. Fuji Pro 400H. Tiffen 67mm 81B Warming Filter

Fauxtojournalism

For when you want to come off looking like a photojournalist, but in reality you're not. Make up a story to go along with what is happening in the image, and eschew things that a professional journalist might take into consideration. Such things as fact checking or not including personal bias.

The poor status of Duluth's Central Hillside neighborhood has gotten so scary that no one even waits at the bus stop any more out of fear of crime.

The Second Year Artist

Perfect for people who are newer to photography. They may have just scored their first show at a local coffee house, but are yet to build up a decent body of work around a single concept. The artist will then attempt to compensate for this by titling the photographs with excessively deep or poetic titles in an attempt to inject a higher level of grandeur.

Majestic morning awoken by golden illumination.

Data Dumper

A method used by those who go straight from their camera to a photo sharing website. Why bother even try to name the photographs when the website will figure one out based on the EXIF data? Photographs titled with this method also tend to travel in packs.

The Pop Culture Reference

This one is always a favorite with the teenagers. Take any object shown in the photograph and find some sort of pop culture reference that is vaguely illustrated by the photograph. Movie titles or famous quotes are good, but this method is truly dominated by song titles or lyrics. If a song title is used, bonus points are given for including all of the lyrics as the photograph's caption.

In the cold light of morning

Title taken from the band Placebo. Here is a fan video for the song which coincidently enough is a slide show of vaguely related photographs.

Blank and Blank

When all else fails, just pick two objects depicted in the photograph and implode them together with the word 'and'.

Bus stop and Shadows.

I leave you with two questions.

1. What kind of naming strategy do you use with your own photography?
2. If the photo I used in this post was your own, what would you have titled it?

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

This time around I'm taking on a distant cousin to the Gearhead—The Camera Pornographer.

While the Gearhead is distinguished by his everlasting pursuit if the latest piece of digital photography equipment to be released by CaNikOny, the Camera Pornographer has more eloquent tastes. They don't chase the latest gear, instead they chase after vintage film cameras.

How To Spot A Camera Pornographer

I'm guilty as the next person for only owning vintage film cameras, but the act of only using film cameras isn't what defines a Camera Pornographer. When you visit the Flickr stream of a Camera Pornographer you won't see a lot of photos actually made with their vintage film cameras. What you will find is a lot of pictures of their vintage film cameras.

For the Camera Pornographer, the camera itself is less of a means to see the world as it is an actual object of art itself.

The Camera Pornographer loves their cameras for their chrome, for their non-modern shapes, for their leather covering, and for any other distinguishing feature which is no longer present in contemporary digital SLR camera designs. To a Camera Pornography, the simple curves and bellows on an AGFA Isolette triggers the same aesthetic admiration as the wings on a 1958 Plymouth Fury does to an automotive collector. I don't blame them—many old camera are quite beautiful.

The inherent danger of being a Camera Pornographer comes when the photographer starts to turn their vintage film cameras onto each other. Many Camera Pornographers are contented by just using their digital camera to take the photos of their vintage cameras, but there is a dark line that many cross once they use their old AGFA Clack to take a photo of their newly acquired folding Zeiss Ikon, and vice versa.

As more and more vintage cameras are added to the collection, the need to photograph each new camera with all the other cameras in their collection grows stronger. Eventually they realize that they can start taking photos of their vintage cameras through other vintage cameras and the cycle grows further out of control. It doesn't take long for the Camera Pornographer to find themselves standing at the precipice overlooking the abyss of Camera Infinitum. Few survive making the plunge.

Camera Porn Resources

• Camera Porn Flick Group.
• Tokyo Camera Style: Fun website devoted to taking pictures of film cameras encountered on the streets of Japan. It is sort of the Girls Gone Wild of camera porn.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

If you are a photographer, and that didn't just sent chills down your spine, something is wrong. Call your priest now.

For every dark side there is a light side. In modern photography, selective desaturation is one of the darkest of the dark sides. So what is its light side?

Logically, it has to be the under-explored application of selective oversaturation* in photography.

In a hopeless attempt to bring my blog back towards the side of good, here are a few never seen before color images I've taken this year presented with stunning selective oversaturation.

*Just for the record, this is humorous commentary. I do not take the application of this technique on my photos seriously.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

I was content with smile shutter technology until two weeks ago when I saw a glimpse of the horrible future this technology could unleash.

I was attending a weekend retreat and one of the other attendees had a Sony DSC-W220 digital camera. This camera has the smile shutter, and something much darker and perverse.

* Smile Correction *

You read that right. In a world where a professional photographer can get fired for digitally removing a background element, we can now decide that Uncle Joe doesn't look happy enough in that snapshot we just took, and fix it in-camera.

So how well does this feature work? We did some experimenting. First up is a photo of myself with my typical everyday face.

And then the same image after the camera applied smile correction.

The smile correction doesn't do that bad of a job actually. I just hope to hell that it never gets included as a feature which is enabled by default.

I think about the use of Advanced Photo System cameras during the 1990s. For years the APS format camera my mother owned vomited up wretched looking snapshots into my family's photo album. When I flip through our family album, the mid nineties is the period I consider to be the dark ages. There is a definite drop in the quality of the images from that period due to APS.

There is a lack of good quality prints (in my eyes) in our family albums from those years, but at least what we have is honest imagery. Sure there are a lot of forced fake smiles, but at least those fake smiles are formed by human face muscles. I personally don't like the forced smile photograph, but there is something comforting about seeing the exact same smile on the face of the same person in photographs spanning decades. Same for seeing similar characteristics appear on the faces of children and relatives from later generations. I have little faith that the algorithm in a $150 camera is going to be amazing enough to accurately render the nuances of each individual's smile.

While I was now trembling in fear as to the future of our family snapshots, I was also enthralled by this gimmick. Much like Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue in 1996, I was determined to give this computer a good old fashioned man vs machine smack-down.

The Challenge: Could I produce a frown so deep that the camera couldn't realistically correct it?

Before

After

So who wins? Man or Machine? Give your thoughts in the comments area please.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!

A brief history Wesly Ngetich

Wesly Ngetich was a Kenyan international athlete. He won the Grandma's Marathon in 2005 and 2007, and placed second in the 2006 Houston Marathon my a mere eight seconds.

During the violence that outbroke during the 2007-2008 Kenyan crisis, Ngetich got hit by a poison arrow which took his life.

2007 Grandma's Marathon

At the time, one of my friends was currently living in a house that was right on the course of the marathon. He decided to throw a big marathon day party where we would all show up at 8:00 am and drink and eat all day as we watched a stream of seven thousand people flood by. I had purchased my Yashica Mat 124G two weeks earlier and decided that it would be the camera I'd bring to shoot with that day.

It was still early morning when Wesly Ngetich came running past our little party. The sun was still hanging low in the sky across the street and was in the framing of the scene. I took a single photo as he passed.

Twin Lens Reflex cameras are well known for having lens designs that can create some pretty intense lens flare even under normal lighting conditions conditions. Although I dind't want lens flare, I was just asking for it by shooting without a lens hood directly into the sun with a TLR camera. When I looked at the initial proof of the image, I was saddened that my only photo of the winner was victim to some very serious lens flare.

Still being in the silly mindset that crisp images without massive lens flare was what people would want to see, I put my failed negative into a storage binders and forgot about it for seven months.

January 22nd, 2008

January 22nd, 2008 was the day I seen a news headline saying that the Marathon winner Wesly Ngetich had been killed. I pulled out the negatives I had shot that day of the first runners to pass, and found the bad negative of Ngetich. This time it was different.

Seven months before I was caught up in the technical failures of it. This time though I could see past the haze of the lens flare and could pick out subtle details that I hadn't noticed.

The first time I assessed the image, I hadn't even given it enough time to notice that neither of his feet were touching the ground. A subtly that I think really helps make the image. Running is easy for him. So easy that he can just above the ground and let the heat of the sun push him along the road.

Did I need to care that I didn't throw enough flash at the scene to illuminate his face at all? Nope. We see a runner gliding by in perfect runner's form. All the identification we need is the number on his bib.

Conclusion

Death sucks. I don't really like the idea that someone getting killed is what set me straight in photography. That isn't something I can change though. Death is to photography as oak barrels are to Bourbon whiskey. And in certain genres of photography, caring too much about the details is death to the photograph.

Enjoyed This Post?

If you've enjoyed this, or any other post from my website, why not help me out? The next time you shop at Amazon or B&H Photo Video, come back here and click on this link to Amazon, or this link to B&H first. You'll receive whatever fun new toy you buy for yourself, and I'll receive a fraction of the sale price to help keep this site running. We both win!