What is the point....?

<p>Ha, that's funny, Michael...</p>

<p>My x sent me that, she's a cool chick. Humor is a good thing, it brings perspective, if young'ns listen.</p>

<p>I am a London Plasterer my work will last 100 years does that make me more important than most Photographers? Customers pay me a fortune to do it and it hangs on their walls :)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I am a London Plasterer my work will last 100 years does that make me more important than most Photographers?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes.</p>

<p>Clive just like me and my plastering you have a good eye i like your pictures ;)</p>

<p>Street photos taken now will mean a lot in twohundred years time ! the only problem we wont be around to hear what they say about them ! people may be making money from them and we are dead,it is not fair is it !</p>

<p><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3339/3437530482_f6d35818ec.jpg?v=0" alt="" /> Celtics?..why I oughta....</p>

<p>Hell, that picture is ripe for a caption competition!<br>

Just the sort of street photography that works for me - it seems to tell a story all by itself.</p>

 

<p>Strangely enough, we all treat this forum as a test-bed for photos we're unsure of, even though the forum has more permanence than an exhibition. So I don't think the OP should expect to 'get' all of them. From what I've read, the great photographers tend to find their themes emerging only after a lot of shooting and reviewing.<br>

All the same, I have a lot of sympathy with what David says. Surely we shouldn't have to wait until we're all dead before we find out what the point of our photograpy was? I think the answer is that there are far more people who can speak than there are people with something significant to say. <br>

My problem with street photography is different again. I live in the country.</p>

<p>Here's a passage from the fantastic book "Thinking in the Photographic Idiom" by Marc B. Levey and James Lloyd:</p>

<p>When we look at a photograph and are hard pressed to determine what it is about, it is likely the photographer did not organize the visual information with sufficient clarity to set up a meaningful figure-ground relationship. The viewers eye tends to wander about such photographs more or less randomly. With nothing to hold the viewers attention or direct his vision, he will most likely lose interest and leave the image completely.</p>

<p>Just something to ponder over.</p>

<p>Here's a favorite shot of mine that was lost on many of my friends some of them photographers themselves. I took it several months ago while waiting in line at the post office. I was amused at how one window stated Next Window while the next window was just as empty as the first. I also had a few thoughts about how this might be an example of how inefficient our government can be, but that's another story. The point is that this way of looking at this only became clear when I explained why I took the picture. Then my friends had the "aha" moment. So even with clear intent, sometimes the message of a photograph just doesn't come across to strongly.<br>

Another thing to ponder over.</p><div></div>

<p>So two Irishmen walk <strong><em>OUT</em></strong> of a bar....</p>

<p>When you start worrying about "being creative" or "what is art" or whatever...you become an uncreative acedemic. Go get a Ph.D., tenure, a few of those jackets with the elbow patches, a pipe, and sit back and BS about others work and how bad or good it is.<br>

Every really creative person I've known or read about, just did their thing and didn't give a rat's ass about what others thought about it; well, they did when they needed money, but that's another thread.</p>

<p>From what I've seen, for the exception of a few wedding photogs here on Photo.net, all of you are hobbyists and are making some really nice livings in some other areas - nice enough that you can plop down tens of thousands on a whim for a brand new system and switch whenever someone offers some new feature or more megapixles.</p>

<p>Get a grip.</p>

<p>Shoot what makes you hard and stop bitching.<br>

God! Some of you really need to be bitch slapped with your Leicas!</p>

<p>I empathize with OP David. While a street image is extremely hard to capture and present well, many that we see in that category here on PN just don't convey a clear message.</p>

<p>However, as Marc has noted so well, what we see through the viewfinder and the thoughts that we are having at the moment sometimes are lost to viewers, even with a title.</p>

<p>I do not do "street" photography in that I go out and look for unusual or interesting subject matter, but shoot more on an opportunistic grab shot basis. The majority don't even make the cut for editing and the meaning is not even clear to me.... and I took the dang thing. All that said, I really enjoy good street photography and would like to be better.</p>

<p>I'm attaching a shot made this week that I put in the "sports" category, but it's really a street shot in a sports setting. I think it conveys a clear, albeit humorous message that is near and dear to all red-blooded males, but having hindsight with the way this team is playing this year my intro comment was "<em>And the Manager can't understand why they don't concentrate on the game....</em> " It received 1 comment and 4 ratings. Is it really that bad?</p>

<p>It would help all of us neophites in street photography if the members here on PN that have experience would respond with appropriate comments in the critique forum.</p>

<p>David... thanks for the lively thread!</p>

<div></div>

<p>"Every really creative person I've known or read about, just did their thing and didn't give a rat's ass about what others thought about it; well, they did when they needed money, but that's another thread."<br>

You need to read more..many of the greatest artists and photographers, didn't let other's opinion of their work stop them from their chosen path, but many were totally anxious, frustrated and obsessed about lack of either critical or monetary acceptance for their work, and sometimes from the over expectations of adulation when successful.</p>

<p>Personally for me street photography is all about witnessing real life in places I may never get to go to in my lifetime.  There's plenty of oil paintings hanging up in galleries across the world of street scenes or market scenes from renaissance Venice or North Africa, and street photography is just the modern incarnation of these.  I may never get to go to Inner City Chicago or an Mumbai slum so street photography is probably the purest way I'll get to experience what life is really like in these places.<br>

It's not so important that these images actually have a message; they just need to convey real life happening in real places for me to consider them valuable in their own right. <br>

We rush around the world with blinkers on so wrapped up in our own lives we never think about other peoples'.  To me the street photographer is a person who just celebrates life in all it's forms;  an old man sneaking a peek at a younger woman, a happy couple flirting, a businessman rushing to work... it's a way of stepping into another person's life for just a few moments and realising that all humans on this planet have hopes, dreams, desires and agendas. <br>

So to me treet photography is the purest way of capturing what life is like on our planet, and for that every single street photograph is worthy of being seen.</p>

<p>Look at this pic:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/7114012</p>

<p> </p>

<p>That is a great street picture.<br>

I really would love to take a picture like that.</p>

<p>I too plastered for many years. I found with walls though the best thing is to have them go un-noticed. It's the flaws in bright window light that will bring you down. No comment=no flaw. :)</p>

<p>Ian,<br>

Just reread your post. You pretty well sum it up.Every "street" picture speaks to someone. The best speak to all of us.<br>

Dave J</p>

 

<p>This is a long thread so I'm sure others have already said something similar -- I'll try to read everyones when I can.</p>

<p>My feeling is that there is a wide body of photographers contributing in Photo.net, and everyone is posting his/her best at the level they have reached. I love nature photography but I have yet to equal the many wonderful shots I find here.</p>

<p>Then, I think everyone is unique. What they see as wonderful, you may see as ho-hum. And even if you are the only person who thinks a photo is great, it's still a great photo.</p>

<p>Remember, you are talking photographers, people... they are all very different, and see things as differently as you do.</p>

 

<p>Today in Portland we had the first day of full sunshine in about ten days. After ten days of squirilling around in my head finishing up my taxes and fretting about why some david bell I've never even heard of doesn't like one of my photographs, I strapped on a couple of cameras and took the train downtown for a six hour walk along the river front and up through the university and over to courthouse square, up through skidmore and chinatown, and finally back home on the train. My better muse was with me, the quiet brain that comes with attention to the moment, and life felt good.</p>

<p>I think the photonet definition of street photography is a little bit limited, emphasizing the "magic moment" school and passing over the quieter, more meditative styles that Ian's recent post seemed to allude to. A lot of my favorite photographers do not produce images that are stunning magic moments, but rather produce images that work with each other to produce marvelous portraits of time and place. My mistake has been to post images in WNW forums in hope that they would stand alone (when that was never the intent in making them) and then to be hurt that they didn't work like that. That was my foolishness. onward.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>photonet definition of street photography is a little bit limited, emphasizing the "magic moment" school and passing over the quieter, more meditative styles</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>That's not photo.net's or the S&D forum's definition of street photography. An imperfect working definition would be that street photography is "photos about the experience of life in public." There's plenty of room for quieter, more-meditative photos in that definition. On the other hand, there's a difference between "quiet and meditative" and "boring and unengaging."</p>

<p>Mike is dead on. Where is this "photonet definition"?</p>

<p>jesus guys. ok, already. UNCLE!!! everything I ever said was wrong. there is no photonet definition and my shit is dull. I know better now. way to go, coach.</p>