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Street photography without pissing people off?

This is a misconception, a lot of people mistake street photography with the in-your-face kind of photography.
The Gilden style, trying to catch the hot-dog eating folks right in the act... that particular style is a sub-sub-sub-sub-genre just as “liking music” does not necessarily mean “liking Rap music”. Also, there are the people with lack of imagination that simply try to replicate this style, as if it was the only one just because they saw it.

Street photo can be poetic, calm, passive, and still strongly reasonate.
 

The same can be said of any type of photography, it is all derivative and not really much that is more than replicating.
It won't be long now that we will see someone on the street photographing a person in a bathtub full of milk
some people will say "this is great, I've never seen anything like it!" and others will roll their eyes and say nothing.
 
logan2z said:
I'm not sure who's creepier, Gilden or this guy...

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I suppose the justification for this in-your-face approach would be in the photos. Have to say, I’m unimpressed by either of them. I’m especially unimpressed by Cohen justifying a creepy photo of a girl’s legs by finding features in the print that he didn’t know were there at the time. For me, these two photographers make a good case for an approach in which the subject remains unaware.
 
Two23 said:
Here's a great video showing how to do it right.



Kent in SD
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I find this type of photography completely offensive and any person who behaves like that is not a photographer, but someone who is committing an crime on human privacy.
 
If you want to be like Gilden but without the drama, you can get pretty far with an iPhone pretending to be making selfies. I've tried, this works really well. You can be standing 2 feet away from someone and fill up the frame with their face without them knowing, noticing, caring or objecting. You quickly get bored of it.

@cliveh I feel you, but it's naive to expect any privacy on the street.
 
cliveh said:
I find this type of photography completely offensive and any person who behaves like that is not a photographer, but someone who is committing an crime on human privacy.
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And invading personal space. People like that give photographers a bad name.
 

I have the same question. I’ve tried using small camera/lens combos and shooting from the hip. I still get more than a few annoyed looks.
 
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