Self-Fulfilling Street Photography is The Only Way
Street Photography For Others
Shooting for trends can be rewarding. Everyone loves praise, even false praise. Re-creating a picture someone else has taken happens often in Tokyo, and copying a style to learn from is clever, even admirable. They are not the same thing. The former is all about taking someone else’s creativity and pimping it out for the rest of the world. The latter will help you to reach the creative heights necessary to be an original. To make original street photographs.
Every street photographer, almost every genre, who followed the easy path to glory has fallen by the wayside. Without developing talent, the images made eventually become redundant. New followers dwindle, as the likes and comments from the old ones die off. The trend following photographer becomes algorithmically irrelevant.
The most unfortunate part is that these are quality people, and they are forever stuck within the vicious cycle of being popular, sort-of-popular, or not popular, depending on current trends. Their growth is stymied. They have a million followers, but little creative respect from their peers.
I know many people who have fallen into this trap. Some grow out of it, while others see their in-person relationships with other artists suffer. While in social situations, I have wondered, with a guilty conscience, if my respect is for the person or just social etiquette for someone with a perceived higher station than mine. I want, perhaps need to, be able to respect the artist and the art.
Street Photography For Yourself
The more I shot for others, or what I thought others would like, the more miserable I became. I quit for about one year. I shot weddings, portraits, landscapes, anything but street photography. My street photography catalogue went from tens of thousands of pictures in a year to a few hundred over the same time.
I hadn’t made a conscious choice to stop; I just left. It was like breaking up with a girlfriend you still love. Walking away is about the only thing you can do. I came back to it in the same way I left. It wasn’t a choice, I just fell in love again. As soon as I recognized this new love, I chose to honour it.
I did that by challenging myself to learn all I could. Shortly after, this website started, and its pages attempt to share that knowledge.
The most important lesson I have to share is to shoot what you feel, not what you see. This sounds counterintuitive in the reactive-based world of street photography, but it works. It forces me to be ultra-observant, which allows me to anticipate what is about to happen and capture it as I like.
The single greatest satisfaction in creating art came in just such an instance. I was on a train platform, and I had an idea in mind, which was going very well. I began to notice I wasn’t the only observer; I wasn’t even the only one capturing moments. There were no other photographers, but some people were hopelessly lost in themselves while staring at another. That is when I saw the man. The frame popped into my head before I could see what he was looking at. I moved into position and waited for the other elements to converge to capture what I felt.
That image is below.
A momentary infatuation that lasts forever.
Street Photography for Art
The best street photography feels like it belongs next to the greats of any genre in art. There is a spirit of freedom in the creation of, and those who create it. Anyone can take a picture, but we can not all paint, sculpt, write or perform. That alone separates street photography into the everyman art form. A common moment we all see frozen for all time. As romantic as that notion is, street photography is a truth we can all understand.
My truth is not exactly yours, and yours is not exactly mine. Please take what you will from this as we both move forward into the ether of the mediocrity that is street photography, the greatest of all art.
