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Street Photography has a few different descriptions. Generally speaking they are photographic images out in, along, thru, beside, around, and from the streets of the world. Most are with people in them, but not all. They usually depict a time within the history of the world, a document. Generally, again, they are mostly snap shots on the fly, catching a moment in time, a situation never to occur again…. most probably.
I have not over-studied the history of this topic and i don't want to be influenced by the modern conclusions sitting waiting so close at hand, …wiki's, youtube docs, etc. Though, i have viewed many books and watched numerous shorts on various street photographers, the sustenance is in the street. There is in fact a series being produced by and of NYC modern non digital, film connoisseurs and voyagers. Worth watching and it is ongoing for now…. easy to find.
You get the idea. I have been shooting street images since my first roll of film in the late sixties. Though i have wandered off into commercial work from weddings to 4x5 table top and advertising jobs thru-out my photographic career, i have always maintained a love for that image just waiting to present itself, to be captured, shy and wanting my love…. from the streets of the earth.
The camera teaches one to see what is, there. The mind often fills in gabs where something is missing. One sees a car, not all the reflections off the paint, chrome that gives a very different reality… the reflections of puddles, water, shiny surfaces, window panes, floors etc…. not to mention shadows and their intrusions into the 'real'. The camera does not have a mind to fill in the gaps, (tho that is coming, soon) so the captured image is often not what one thought he or she saw in the eye to the mind. Reflection can clutter or simplify.
Early on in my late teens, i became fascinated with the truth behind the lens, splattered onto celluloid. There is so much that goes on in that little box we used to call a camera. The refraction thru the lens(it's quality), wide or long, the film, so many varieties, black and white, colour negs and slides, infra-red, its exposure time, its developing time and manipulations. The darkroom printing and the many techniques to produce the finished 'art work'. This is just touching the surface of the education needed to be an old time photographer. Science; optics, chemistry, the mathematics of time and movement and the all important element, the astonishing realities of 'light', its virtues, its subtle differences, hue, soft, sharp, hazy, diffused, quick, slow, its nature on various surfaces. What to shoot, when, how…..street photography; is someone going to get pissed off, what rights do i have, what is respectful, daring…. how to capture what you think you see?
Composition, you have got to have an eye. A relationship with the street. You need to develop a tendency to see many things at once. The form, the light, the movement. Is your shutter speed fast enough, slow enough to get what you are wanting, is there enough dept of field for sharpness, softness where needed? There is always some chance involved and with a prepared mind, you can play with reality and create what might be called, 'art'. Gamble. The camera lens is the eye. Where do you want to see from, eye level, below, above, hidden…. or from a place the human eye can't go….easily.
Today almost everyone has a camera equivalent to a very good camera of the past. Their phone. I see people discovering the enthusiasm that i have experienced thru-out my life. In some ways that is encouraging and in other ways it has had the tendency to produce much too many mediocre images. Certainly it has limited the sales of prints for the serious art photographer. Most people, of course, would rather have one of their own images hanging above their sofa… and the quality has nothing to do with the hard earned education of the photographer of the past…… look, shoot, get lucky and saturate the world with but another interpretation of the beauty surrounding us. It is that simple, today.
It is what it is as is almost too often stated these days. There is a new resurgence of film camera images. Sometimes i wish i had kept a few film cameras but they are all gone. Besides my iPhone i have one camera, a Lumix with a ziess lens, 28mm to 200 zoom, F2.8 digital. The most important element of this camera is the digital screen that pulls out and revolves so when i am taking my infamous reflections in low lying water (puddles and reflections), i can see and adjust my composition and manipulate texture with my polarizing filter. (To be explained in a future blog.)
People(animals/birds) are important in most of my images. They complete the world. They fill in the space between the camera lens and the mind. They are the world, the emotion of man. They tell us of the reality surrounding. They can teach of the truth of the times…. but they can also lie…. ‘Most people would prefer a lie that feels good over a truth that hurts.’ and that caresses the image process also. The street photography i prefer depicts a feeling within the form, shade; that space within the mind travelling towards the heart.
Life moves on. Technology has no morals, no sensitive considerations for the moment… sometimes that destroys minds, especially in todays modern world, makes you wonder sometimes just who is in control of this incredible planet, the naked apes, their brand new inventions, or still the hidden peace of the silent forest of mother earth. The world is getting weirder as i type. Till next time. Balance in the streets… expose your self.
This has been a first Blog Post in a Street Photography Series i am in the process of thinking about, involving the nature of the mind, the eye, the lens and the heart that binds it all together.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was my first and last photographic artist hero…. In the thirties when photography was struggling to become an art form he was questioned by an art critic reporter whom said to him, "anyone can obtain a great photographic image, it is simply by chance, not art". Henri replied, “yes, but, chance begets the disciplined mind”. I believed and practised that in my street photography for years but now as the image has become so common place, with a huge percentage of humanity with a camera and millions upon millions of image making technological devises dispersed throughout the streets and heavens of the earth… i wonder… have i changed?… i look to see where few eyes flow as my time upon this earth winds down around the last bends. One such place... Reflections of reality. Where there are humans, animals, birds; street photography will continue to be of interest...imo
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WeyWord Times / All Writing and Images by Patrick Wey
Series of Photo Work in Progress…. Moments in Bent Time
Hang Me Up Somewhere…. View Images Here
I presently have ‘Reflection Images’ on display in the best Photographic Art Gallery in SMA San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The owner herself, an extremely accomplished photo artist with some amazing Street Photo Art, Jo Brenzo, who was professor of photography for two decades at Bellas Artes, the national art school of Mexico.