I don't 'get' many of the photos posted here.

[john_markanich]

<p>These images won't make any sense or be of any value to anyone until about 100 years from now when suddenly the clothing, the buildings and surroundings will have attained the patina of time. Only then will the nostalgia of days-gone-by become an art form of and to itself. It will be as if a snap shot of any scene from 19XX or 20XX (add your own last two digits) is a miraculous capture of the essense of human existence of the day. Beats me too, I'll be dead by then.</p>

[tony_cooper5]

<blockquote>

<p>I have no clue as to why I liked this in my viewfinder enough to expose a piece of film</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Its a dance, the first step enters with energy, the second shows the tempo and in the last we see it smoothly execute into the next but unseen part of the melody.</p>

<p>This is the bit that give me the giggles the interpreting, I might give the dancing as explanation but thats not really what it is. The pic shows a flow of form and also has a pattern, pants legs pants, male female male, black white black. And the vertical bars hold it all into a set.<br>

Or it just could be that our eyes are drawn to a soft comforting spot in the center I think the technical term is 'toosh'.</p>

 

[tony_cooper5]

<p>I can tell you that as a genre and as a part of the photographers experience, it develops and evolves with the lessons learned in the past carried forward ...(oh my God what did I say).<br>

If you think that stepping outside and randomly taking a pic is street, (although there is some confusion over the word 'random' as its often used by posting with a fear of a negative critigue) then you are right but it is viewed as the first step. If after a year of subjecting forum members to the same technique (likely too because some might up the praise to encourage you further) then we might likely need to either ignore you(me) or tell you how you should take up cat photography.</p>

<p>Street photography is not a static thing in terms of the photographer's interface. Its a third eye that sees little at first and then starts to see a bit more. Some examples, Focal Length. I can explain this one from my own current circumstance. Im exclusively using 100mm and before anyone says "Ant get out of the bushes" I must tell you its a macro and I poke it in ears. But the thing is, my third-eye, my conceptual eye is fixed as a prime at 100mm. I dont have the experience of saying, bugga wrong lens, instead everything that I see is perfectly framed for 100mm. The other one is b&w. Film users will be able to tell you that their third eye is set to b&w also. Its not that every pic has to demonstrate this but rather than some scenes lend themselves more to the play of dark and light and textures.</p>

<p>Digital is different, you can convert and so when you arrive home a great pic can be converted, and you say "Nah, its already good and I like the colors" the next pic is mediocre at best ...gee I wonder if a b&w conversion would make it better, "Nah its still awful". Then to the worst pic, it was taken when you needed to hitch up your pants and accidentally took a blurry diagonal over exposed shot of a rusty drainpipe. </p>

<p>So you turn up the contrast, add a bit of dodging and whack it with a film grain filter in photoshop. And into your Hardcore b&w street gallery it goes. (sigh)</p>

 

[fi_rondo1]

<p>Mark L., Sometimes what you don't get today, you'll get tomorrow. It's like that with any genre of art, any sport, any person... I remember converting a friend of mine to baseball. He's from England and thought it was a boring game until I started pointing out the situations, the subtleties, and the tension... all of which is not there if you can't recognize it. This doesn't mean that you'll start liking blurry pictures anytime soon, but the more you get to know about photography through viewing images or even taking them, you can't help but gain in "getting" more of what there is to get.</p>

<p>At the same time, sometimes there's nothing to get.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[tar heel]

<p>This is one of the best questions I've ever seen on this website. </p>

<p>Beauty and taste are purely in the eyes of the observer. I read PDN, the fashion and commercial shooter's magazine and the "Best 30 under 30", meaning the best up-and-coming photographers in the commercial field generate images that make me scratch my head. I just don't get it. But I guess that's why I'm not a fashion and commercial photographer. Shots that take no imagination; shots that a blind monkey could get are held up as "avante-garde, cutting edge, innovative..." So, don't agonize over it. Take the Photo.net ratings with a grain of salt. One man's garbage is another's priceless work of art. It's just the way of the world.</p>

[vktr]

<p>Amazingly, all photos (except for the last) in this thread are boring ;) Here is my contribution:</p>

<div></div>

[john_jennings2]

<p>It is in the nature of street photography that the vast majority of your snaps are either complete misses or "not quite good enough". True of EVERYBODY. There will always be a temptation to post your "not quite good enough". We shouldn't do it, but we do anyway.<br />Since photography is very subjective, if you stare at a "not quite good enough" long enough you can convince yourself that it really IS good enough. I call this "Zenning out". Should avoid this, should not put "my bad" on the street.</p>

[tony_cooper5]

<p>I delete mine John. As I think a picture shows improves I remove those that fall below the new standard. I think that the Delete button is an important part of the digital workflow. I also dont delete based on anothers opinion. Actually Flickr taught me to be more assertive in my own likes. I look at the number of views my pics get and see that any with a pretty girl outnumber all by 3:1. </p>

[tomcollins]

<p>I'm not always certain why I shoot what I see. I'm sometimes confused about doing everything photographically correct and missing the moment and then seeing a moment that looks like something I should be shooting and not taking the time to make sure that all the elements are positioned correctly, that is, ISO, fstop. shutterspeed, juxtaposition, why I think this is a shot. I like this quote by one of my favorite photographers..<br>

“I photograph to see what things look like photographed.”<br /> ~Garry Winogrand</p>

<p><img src="http://www.tomcollinsphotography.com/Travel/Taipei/IMG9817/825198947_Jwg5X-M.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="184" /></p>

[markdeneen]

<p>I think my side is going to split open and my spleen fall out from laughter. </p>

[spanky]

<p>One of the reasons why I stayed with film rather then jump into digital was because I always agreed with HCB on the importance of contact sheets. The contact sheet is really where the merits of a photographer are most readily apparent. Many of my shots are misses of course, but I like the fact that they are still available to me for future study or printing should my tastes change. Sure one can print a sheet of thumbnail jpegs but one can never know what was deleted and will never be seen. In the event any of you haven't seen this set, I highly recommend William Kleins' Contact series of DVDs. Simply put it's an immensely enjoyable and informative look into the working methods of some of the worlds greatest photographers. </p>

[mjferron]

<p>It's really very simple. Landscape is not about just aiming at a mountain or ocean. Macro is not just about getting close. Portraiture is not just about taking someone's picture. Taking a photo of the average person walking down the street is not very exciting. It might have meant something to the photographer who got brave and took the shot but most often it often doesn't translate well.</p>

<p>Any form of photography takes practice to get good. Street for me is someone capturing the special person, look, expression etc. It has to ignite an emotional response from the viewer to have real impact.</p>

<p> </p>

[photo_galleries]

<p>There will be some photos that you will not get because the photos represent some personal connection with the photographer for that particular place and/or time. Then there will be others that you WOULD get and still represent such a personal connection for the photographer -- IMHO, those are the special ones. I shoot quite a few of the former, but every so often, I capture the latter. Check out my website to see what I mean.<br /> -Keith</p>

[kezia]

<p><img src="../photo/9313833" alt="" /><br>

This one ( <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/9313833">http://www.photo.net/photo/9313833</a>) is about personal connection. There aren't even any people in it, though some person is implied in the presence of the bicycle. My connection is that I walk past "no go" signs like this every day around the buffer zone through divided Nicosia in Cyprus. Usually I don't bother to take a photo, but I think this time I was attracted to the mixture of lines and angles, none of which seem to be completely horizontal or vertical, and the bike and lights in the background, which sets off in my imagination visions of someone burrowing through the Green Line into the buffer zone and leading some sort of secret existence there, a visual joke of sorts. The problem is I can't really expect anyone else to see all that. And given that it doesn't have immediate impact through strong simple composition or colour it is unlikely that many people will even bother to view it, so I'll never really know whether it has any merit apart from my own personal response to it. Street photography isn't just hard to do well, it's also hard to learn how to improve because mediocre street photography tends not to provoke a critical response of any sort.</p>

[softlight]

<p>There are 2 points I'd like to bring to attention, which I primarily focus on when evaluating a photograph.<br>

1. There is a photographer's opinion and perspective. This is largely influencing the photograph in question. The fact that we don't get some of the photos might be attributed to that. Sometimes our own imagination falls short until someone jogs that part of our brain.<br>

2. The necessity of what we think is bad photography is important to understand what we think is good photography. At photo.net, you are getting this education for free. Do we think hard before deciding whether a photo gets a 2 or 3? a 1 or 2? Perhaps there is something we need to understand about the rating system so that it doesn't remain a joke as it has become for many photographs here.<br>

If I don't understand a photograph and don't qualify enough to judge it, I skip it (but not before taking a hard look).</p>

[lachaine]

<p>It's a "street photo" if you think it is, basically... but that doesn't mean that other people will think the same. "Street photography", as I tried to say before, is a certain genre. It's not just snapping pictures in the street, and it's not just owning and carrying a certain kind of camera or certain lenses. It's worth studying examples from the history of photography, and from current photographers as well.</p>

<p>I didn't mean to suggest in my previous post that other types of photography don't have their own difficulties. Yes, I'm sure that squatting in a muddy, mosquito-infested swamp for hours hoping that some bird will pop up within telephoto range is difficult, or at least, very unpleasant... but I'm equally sure few people who give such examples have actually done that. Everybody does everything on the internet. When I said that, I was trying to emphasize that "street photography" is not just snapping pictures of things we see on the streets, no more than somebody's vacation snapshot of a nice landscape scene is really "landscape photography".</p>

<p>The original poster doesn't get many photos here because there's nothing to get. They aren't really street photography.</p>

[markdeneen]

<p>"The original poster doesn't get many photos here because there's nothing to get. They aren't really street photography."<br>

======================<br>

Pierre--<br>

You mentioned many things it is NOT. Can you explain what it IS?</p>

[leslie_cheung]

<p>1. Boring photographers in boring places beget boring photos...Street photos included. <br>

2. Most don't edit well, especially of their own work.</p>

<p>Between 1 and 2, most photos here surely are nothing to "get" and forgettable.</p>

<p> </p>

[tony_cooper5]

<p>Ehimya is likely giving that one a long hard look Akaky ..well after me anyway (looking back I see another 30 behind me and can hear Mr Cooper madly shouting .."me next, me next").<br />Leslie, I might remember just the one for a time and while it might not appeal to all photographers, it has immediate appeal for me ...as I was a bottle fed baby.</p>

<p>I also disagree about boring, there is the potential for wide eyes to even see more than the photographer. Exotic people and places are relative to where the viewer is to be found. I had a look at Keiths photo gallery and if they were the same poses and instead my own neighbours then I might agree but instead his images permitted me to stand on his street corners and view them as something exotic, well that and his photos are great.</p>

[joan_s.]

<p>Street photography is a very difficult genre. I find two things generally "make or break" the picture - the use of colour, and the subject's facial expression.<br>

It takes an experience street photographer to get the subjects to trust him enough to take close-ups, and there are a few people around here who do it very well. I don't really enjoy approaching strangers on the street, so I don't do it much.<br>

If the person's activity is the subject of the photo, then I think those pictures displaying an activity that says something about society are more powerful than those of people doing something weird fort the sake of it.<br>

Colours are what bring beauty and fun to this world, so I think it's shame not to use it in photography, at least most of the time. I also find that in photojournalism/documentary, black and white is used to dramatize situations to a point that distorts reality.<br>

I approached photography through "street", and I've progressively moved away from it. I admit I find it gets boring after a while... and few people can pull it off. But I enjoy looking at other people's work for inspiration, and there are some great things out there.</p>

[markdeneen]

<p>Taken with a camera while standing in the street, but definitely NOT "street photography."</p><div></div>

[Sunset-Lounge]

<p>Don't you mean... a man with a bag of groceries walking a weiner dog?</p>

[Sunset-Lounge]

<p>sidewalk photography. distant cousin to street photography?</p><div></div>

[marklcooper]

<p>I'm back in the office again after my weekend exile from broadband. Saturday I tried opening this thread on dial-up: while it was opening I made a pot of coffee. Made up a bach of sheep replacer milk. Fed the bottle baby lamb. Took her out to the pasture to leave her with her cousins. When I got the thread still wasn't fully downloaded, so I bagged it.</p>

<p>This thread has turned out to be great. I'm glad I asked. Throughout the day I'm going to review the responses posted so far, then will get back to it again tonight. - Thanks - Mark</p>

[markdeneen]

<p>"Don't you mean... a man with a bag of groceries walking a weiner dog?"<br>

I don't think the groceries can walk the dog either. How about, a man carrying a bag of groceries while walking a weiner dog?</p>