What's the point?

Cholentpot said:

Luck was part but read how he developed the photo, also the amount of darkroom work he did. Ansel was a darkroom master. From what I recall he developed that negative by holding part of it in the solution for longer and the putting the rest in. If that's not a gamble I don't know what is.

You can have all the luck in the world but if you have no skill to back it there's not much that's going to happen.

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I'm talking strictly about how he found the scene. It was all luck.

"It doesn't matter if your smart or pretty, you must be lucky" - Wolfgang Lotz

Wayne said:

There are many approaches to photography where the moment never existed at all. Thats not usually the case for street photography so I'll just leave it at that.

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A moment always exist, just like the moment you typed your response and posted it, now your response is captured and preserved just like a photo. You can not change the laws of nature to suite your logic.

Wayne said:

There are many approaches to photography where the moment never existed at all. Thats not usually the case for street photography so I'll just leave it at that.

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That is what Fauxto$hop is for, making images that never happened.

Sirius Glass said:

That is what Fauxto$hop is for, making images that never happened.

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Even in photoshop you create a moment of expression, but the argument was with actual photography. moments always exist, they are time and how the time was spent.

Kevin Ekstrom said:

A moment always exist, just like the moment you typed your response and posted it, now your response is captured and preserved just like a photo. You can not change the laws of nature to suite your logic.

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What is the moment captured?






Dead Link Removed

Crickets.

Here's more. What is the moment captured? Are these not "actual photography"? None are digital.

Dead Link Removed

Maris said:

Maybe street photography is specimen collection. It's like than catching, killing, and pinning butterflies in a display box to demonstrate one's hunting skills. But instead of a net one uses a camera and the results of a successful hunt are displayed as photographs.
Forgive me, I'm a retired entomologist.

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When I was studying entomology I don't ever remember using display boxes to demonstrate our hunting skills though I guess they could have been used for that purpose. Ours were used as "study collections" showing differences between the insects we collected that while they looked similar, they were not the same even though, sometimes, all in the collection belonged to the same "family"...........Regards!

wayne

i can't believe you keep posting photoshopped photographs in this thread they are all digital !

Wayne said:

There are many approaches to photography where the moment never existed at all. Thats not usually the case for street photography so I'll just leave it at that.

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wayne
what you have posted is not true as i said earlier. NONE of what is on the negative is reality, none of it exists.
a camera and film and lens and paper &c manipulate reality in a way that it creates something different than
we see it. the human eye is not able to see static moments, it is not able to visualize things from the equivilant
of f2 to f22, or see less than a panoramic.
i had a conversation once with a well known landscape photographer where he suggested that his imagery is
unmanipulated and presents images that show no intervention by him ( as you are suggesting street photography does )
but his work looks like an acid trip ... long exposures weird lighting stuff like wind turbines that look like toothpicks or pinwheels
that have been looked at through a strobe light ... all with an otherworldly tonality of black white and grey.
how is any of that a moment that existed any more than an image made with a digital camera or cellphone or something that
has been manipulated to death in photoshop ? its no different, especially if it is B/W ... unless we all have monochromic vision / monochromacy
and the idea that it is all unvarnished and raw and exactly as life exists is as dreamlike as a salvadore dali painting.
(or portrait of him )
===
ctrout
there is no point, in any of it, unless you want to make a point
i guess that s the point ? genres types styles its all meaningless
i've heard its about making some sort of connection? maybe
that connection is with other people, or learning more about oneself through
through seeing others and realizing that we are all the same and pretty much un-evolved
for 40,000 years, or maybe its a connection with whats around us and just remembering something ?
IDK there's no point in a lot of stuff, its just busywork to get us to the next stop on the bus.

Late entrant to this thread...

It's interesting to read these discussions, when all imagery from the beginning of time has had some interpretation on behalf of the one creating the image.

Does a cave painting look precisely like what is being rendered? Are the early Netherlandish oil portraits direct, unbiased representations of the sitter? Were Elizabeth Taylor's Halsman portraits literal and precise representations of the human sitting on the posing chair? What about the "postprocessing" done on Karsh portraits? Is the dodging and burning and easel tilting and expansion through development that A. Adams was known for necessary to communicate the subject? Interpretation or manipulation has always been part of "the picture".

jnanian said:

wayne
what you have posted is not true as i said earlier. NONE of what is on the negative is reality, none of it exists.
a camera and film and lens and paper &c manipulate reality in a way that it creates something different than
we see it. the human eye is not able to see static moments, it is not able to visualize things from the equivilant
of f2 to f22, or see less than a panoramic.
i had a conversation once with a well known landscape photographer where he suggested that his imagery is
unmanipulated and presents images that show no intervention by him ( as you are suggesting street photography does )
but his work looks like an acid trip ... long exposures weird lighting stuff like wind turbines that look like toothpicks or pinwheels
that have been looked at through a strobe light ... all with an otherworldly tonality of black white and grey.
how is any of that a moment that existed any more than an image made with a digital camera or cellphone or something that
has been manipulated to death in photoshop ? its no different, especially if it is B/W ... unless we all have monochromic vision / monochromacy
and the idea that it is all unvarnished and raw and exactly as life exists is as dreamlike as a salvadore dali painting.
(or portrait of him )

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I wasn't suggesting there is no interpretation going on in street photography, or that it captures the moment realistically. I was only saying that the moment existed in reality when the shutter was tripped. There is an argument to be made (that I don't much care to pursue) that some photography does capture moments in time (within the limits of the medium, and the always-present personal interpretation), otherwise 2 people above wouldn't have suggested as much. Wedding photos, baby photos, even some scenic/landscapes and other types of photos are perceived that way by many with at least some justification. They are at least "attempts" to capture a moment in time, whether they succeed or not is a matter of debate.

But then there are many others like the examples I gave where there isn't even an attempt to capture a "moment", or even "reality", and some are completely free from all visual references to time.

On previous week I was wondering with M4-2 for hours around Montreal after work. Museums are closed after five, I can't eat and drink for hours after work. What else? Going for walk, it is outdoors, healthy and it is entertaining, if not adventitious, if I choose not so regular paths and locations.
Now I think the moment is not just as simple as some candid. I'm looking at recognized street photogs photos and often they are great because they were able to create the moment by themselves. Not staging it, but seen something unusual in the usual content.

When you photograph something that is moving within a static composition, you have the chance of expressing the complete geometry of a given scene, which may only last for a fraction of a second. Sometimes you may get it right and sometimes wrong. But when you get it right, it is like hitting a golf ball with a perfect crack that takes it to the green and on very rare occasions also down the hole in one.

That is what is so exciting about street photography.

ctrout said:

What's the point of street photography? I mean, most of the street shots I see are of some gnarly old Asian dude missing a couple teeth, or a guy in an apron standing behind a counter full of smelly fish. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing many of these images but I don't know what it is that draws me to them. Why do we like this genre and what is it about this genre that makes it a credible art form?

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When you see the gnarly Asian dude with teeth missing on the street , you glance and look away. In a street photograph, you can actually look and see his humanity.

cliveh said:

When you photograph something that is moving within a static composition, you have the chance of expressing the complete geometry of a given scene, which may only last for a fraction of a second. Sometimes you may get it right and sometimes wrong. But when you get it right, it is like hitting a golf ball with a perfect crack that takes it to the green and on very rare occasions also down the hole in one.

That is what is so exciting about street photography.

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Amen!

ctrout said:

What's the point of street photography? I mean, most of the street shots I see are of some gnarly old Asian dude missing a couple teeth, or a guy in an apron standing behind a counter full of smelly fish. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing many of these images but I don't know what it is that draws me to them. Why do we like this genre and what is it about this genre that makes it a credible art form?

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Humans are biologically wired to be fascinated by other humans.

ReginaldSMith said:

Humans are biologically wired to be fascinated by other humans.

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OK. What's your point?

My blue heeler (dog) is fascinated by tennis balls as well as certain humans.

Does that make her a photographer?

I dunno, does she have a camera?

ReginaldSMith said:

I dunno, does she have a camera?

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Thanks, good question.

I asked my blue heeler about that. She said she can rent any camera with photographer if she should need still photos.

She also said "Grrr" "The future is online video: who needs a still camera?"

Harry Stevens said:

Without street photography history would have a big hole in it.

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Yes, street work is a sort of documentary record.

Street photography is also a form of story telling, and a source of humor, pique, mystery, and surprise.

ReginaldSMith said:

Street photography is also a form of story telling, and a source of humor, pique, mystery, and surprise.

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OK...but it's mostly a yawn. My blue heeler can do it, and from a more interesting angle. However she writes that video is more gratifying.

jtk said:

OK...but it's mostly a yawn. My blue heeler can do it, and from a more interesting angle. However she writes that video is more gratifying.

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You can write that about pretty much most forms of photography, there's boring rubbish everywhere.

Heck I find 90% of birding/landscape/portrait/motorsport etc etc photographs boring and devoid of artistic merit. I'd never write the genres off because of that though

John Free explains the meaning of street photography in best way IMO:

https://www.youtube.com/user/JohnFreePhtography/videos