Photo of the Week - #49 8/22/22

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To me, this image has the look and feel of b&w work from decades ago. My thought is based on the predominance of black tones. Although it’s rather matter-of-fact, there’s art as well

All right, all you street photography aficionados, help me out here. I come from a place where the street-photo ops generally involve cattle peering over fences, so I’m not very familiar with the genre. What do you look for in a street photo? What makes a street photo particularly good?

 

I can make one technical comment, though—to my eye, at least, I think the composition would be stronger if there were more of the scene shown to the right and less to the left, for three reasons:

1. The main subject would be facing into the frame rather than out of it.
   
2. The nice sweeping line of the sidewalk would be leading into the interior of the frame, rather than escorting us to the upper right-hand corner.
   
3. The motorcycles are more visually interesting than the wall on the left.
   

As documentation of a place and time, it’s an interesting photo, and it leaves me curious about where it was taken.

This looks like it was done back in the 70’s on something like Plus X. I’m a nut for b&w film and while I wouldn’t have put the man in the center I still like this for it’s basic simplicity. I think it tells a story but it’s a different story for each person who sees it.

 

Rick H.

All right, all you street photography aficionados, help me out here. I come from a place where the street-photo ops generally involve cattle peering over fences, so I’m not very familiar with the genre. What do you look for in a street photo? What makes a street photo particularly good?

<snip>

I'm partial to Brad Evans' line about "capturing the energy".....

Edited August 23, 2022 by Wayne Melia

I love travel and also enjoy black and white photography so this ticks those boxes for me. I love how this photo sort of draws the eye in by “building” from the sidewalk scene in the foreground without a lot going on, to the motos & scooters to everything else, finally becoming super busy the deeper you go into the shot.

 

I love the “demarcation line” of the curb which provides a nice leading line straight into the mayhem of the street scene.

 

It totally doesn’t matter (to me anyway) whenever the shot was taken, there’s timelessness and a universality to the image.

 

I find this to be quite wonderful and engaging. It makes me wish I could get to wherever this is. I’d like to think this is film photography (and it well could be from the look of the shot and of the place) but in the end it absolutely doesn’t matter.

Love it!

Assume it was taken in Asia somewhere. It doesn't do much for me I'm afraid. It is interesting only in so far as I wonder where it was taken. Get closer or have the man engaged in conversation or something more exciting. Of course way too late for that. I also think, given the non-action in the scene, color might have stimulated the eyeballs a bit more. Edited August 24, 2022 by Robin Smith

I am guessing that this is in India because one of the motorcycles has a tank with a Royal Enfield label, which is manufactured in India. Of course, Royal Enfield exports all over the world, including the United States, so that evidence alone is not conclusive. But when I zoom in on the sheet in front of one of the lottery agencies, the price is 1 Crore, which is an Indian unit of currency. The one motorcycle with a cast wheel identifies it as something from a recent decade, not the 70's.

 

As for the photograph, I find that it has many interesting details that invite close inspections. I like it, although I think that Leslie's comments on the composition are valid.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Glenn McCreery

Thank you for all your comments. Thanks to those, who brought up the aspects of the leading lines made by the stalls on the left and motorcycles on the right. This indeed was the basis of the composition and I am glad that it was conveyed effectively.

 

Glenn is absolutely right. This was shot in a tiny roadside town in India in the Himalayan foothills (really in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest). I was surprised to see so many motorcycles there, many of them being Royal Enfields. I used my mirror less Sony to shoot it sometime in June this year.

 

I agree this isn’t a killer shot. I just wanted to show how ordinary people look and dress in a small remote town like this. The demeanor of this person also reflects how average people in India react to cameras focused on them, curious, but not overly aggressive or annoyed. We have a single person and a part of the environment. I also feel, in a shot like this, it’s challenging to maintain focus on a subject, alongside showing a part of the street environment without introducing too much distraction. We just stopped there for a couple of minutes. If we had more time, i wished to document the location in more detail.

 

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.