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Author Topic: Love Real Street  (Read 50721 times)

RSL

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #40 on: February 05, 2013, 03:53:49 pm »

Fun documentaries, Guy, but not street photography. Nobody's suggesting you copy anyone. That's impossible in any case. But by studying the masters of street you at least stand a chance of learning two things: what street photography is and how photographic geometry works.
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Rob C

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #41 on: February 05, 2013, 05:29:47 pm »

Russ, this is the modern age.

You can photograph anything you like and then apply any old designation you wish. Why? "It's art because I say it is" spawned the right.

That it might be crap doesn't matter; it's what the 'creator' says it is! Don't you love that? Everybody feels good; we're all stars!

;-)

Rob C

amolitor

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #42 on: February 05, 2013, 05:31:59 pm »

... Emulation is deadly to anyone seeking their truth through art. To grab a forerunner's style, and assume it is a standard by which your own truth must conform, will kill the enterprise before it even begins. ...

As to assumed rules of photography, be ever so careful of that tight box. A rule is a boundary generally claimed by someone who might have run out of ideas and seeks to assemble the world within the limits (rules) of their imagination. This is street photography, that is not!  ...

Without communication, there is no art.

Without emulation, there is no communication. A photograph will inevitably refer to other photographs the viewer has seen, there's no way to look at a photograph without thinking of and being reminded of other photographs. The photographer should be mindful of this and deal with this reality, accept it and embrace it. Emulation is not copying.

Rules are one thing, they're just solutions to problems. You may choose other solutions to the problems, or leave the problem unsolved. Best if your lack of solution somehow serves the image and the communication, however.

Street photography is a genre, there aren't any specific "rules" for it, but it does have a pretty well defined definition. If we choose to eschew definitions, well, that's ok I guess. It's going to be awfully hard to communicate if nobody's using words to mean the same thing.
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wolfnowl

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #43 on: February 05, 2013, 06:15:27 pm »

And another. Ambiguous?

I don't know about ambiguous.  Thought provoking, at least for me.

Mike.

All alone.
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wolfnowl

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #44 on: February 05, 2013, 06:16:29 pm »

Last but not least.

Hurrying home.

Really like the mystery in this one.  There isn't enough detail in the woman's clothing/actions to fill in the answers for the questions that spring to mind.

Mike.
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James Clark

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #45 on: February 05, 2013, 06:35:22 pm »

Here's one...

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James Clark

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #46 on: February 05, 2013, 06:35:57 pm »

...and another
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #47 on: February 05, 2013, 07:51:52 pm »

Since this thread, like some others, has gotten bogged down in issues of definition, I thought I should try to clarify the essential definition of "street" photography, and illustrate with some examples.

Here is an example of Pure Street Photography. It is a photograph of nothing but a portion of a street, with no distracting persons, dogs, or even kittens to sully its pristine nature:
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #48 on: February 05, 2013, 07:53:23 pm »

This next example might be taken for "street" by the uninformed, but close inspection will reveal that only a small portion at the bottom is "street," while the rest is "sidewalk:"
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #49 on: February 05, 2013, 07:54:50 pm »

And one more example. This one is clearly NOT "street," as it was taken on a beach.

I hope this will make everything perfectly clear.    ;D
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RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #50 on: February 05, 2013, 09:08:45 pm »

Without communication, there is no art.

Without emulation, there is no communication. A photograph will inevitably refer to other photographs the viewer has seen, there's no way to look at a photograph without thinking of and being reminded of other photographs. The photographer should be mindful of this and deal with this reality, accept it and embrace it. Emulation is not copying.

Rules are one thing, they're just solutions to problems. You may choose other solutions to the problems, or leave the problem unsolved. Best if your lack of solution somehow serves the image and the communication, however.

Street photography is a genre, there aren't any specific "rules" for it, but it does have a pretty well defined definition. If we choose to eschew definitions, well, that's ok I guess. It's going to be awfully hard to communicate if nobody's using words to mean the same thing.

It's understandable that many people such as you find emulation a requirement for communication or art. But not everyone does. Not everyone takes photographs that "inevitably refer to photographs they have seen." Let's understand emulation to see why its inevitability is not universal, and not even desired. Emulation is - "An ambition and effort to equal, excel or surpass another; to compete or rival with some degree of success, especially through imitation." Let's see how this pretty well defined definition serves the cause of art. Is art a competition of rival individuals? Absolutely not by nature. Yes, some artists may compete with each other, but competition is not intrinsic to art. But that's not the worst of emulation. The worst consequence is the imitation. When you seek to imitate another, you lose focus on your own nature, your own internal truth. You lose authenticity of self, and if you enjoy logical consequence, as you seem to, the loss of self is the loss of art. Because art is not a technique to be merely imitated. When authenticity leaves, it is for most people impossible to regain (as true in art as it is in daily life). Once you rely on imitation, you have become a simple mechanic, a robot, not an artist.

I think I've commented at length on rules and who attempts to enforce them and why, so I will let me previous comment stand.

As to street photography and its "pretty well defined definition," where is that spelled out in this thread? If it's not in the thread here, and it is a requirement to meet that "pretty well defined definition" in order to post a photograph, please spell it out for all to attend to. That only makes sense if you are using such rules.

And finally, this branch of the forum is about user critiques. Critiques are rather useful to photographers. Pontificating on rules? Not actually a method of useful critique.
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RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #51 on: February 05, 2013, 09:50:17 pm »

Fun documentaries, Guy, but not street photography. Nobody's suggesting you copy anyone. That's impossible in any case. But by studying the masters of street you at least stand a chance of learning two things: what street photography is and how photographic geometry works.
I'm all ears. Since this is the critique forum, please do pick a photograph I posted and expound on how photographic geometry works. I'd be delighted to hear about it. I find that naked assertions are far less valuable in a critique, don't you?
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RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #52 on: February 05, 2013, 10:04:10 pm »

"Smoker"

Sorry, I can't say I am emulating any of the approved High Priests with this one, and I wasn't attempting any imitation of previous photographs by other people. Sad, huh? It's nothing more than a simple photograph that gave me goose bumps when I pressed the shutter because I knew I had captured the feeling I had about the subject. Looking at this photo, I can always recall that exact moment of my own life, and the feel it gave me capturing this unique and specific moment which belongs only to me. Had I been imitating some other guy's life, I probably would have tossed this in the can. No wait, I would have tossed the camera in the can.
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RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #53 on: February 06, 2013, 02:43:59 am »

Russ, this is the modern age.

You can photograph anything you like and then apply any old designation you wish. Why? "It's art because I say it is" spawned the right.

That it might be crap doesn't matter; it's what the 'creator' says it is! Don't you love that? Everybody feels good; we're all stars!

;-)

Rob C
You're close, but you haven't quite got it there. Since this is a critique thread, I'd like to critique your commentary there.  Rather than me posing as some authority with rules, I'm going to use the wisdom of accomplished artists to demonstrate my point and critique your view. Your view can be summed up as "People ought not claim themselves as artists on the strength of their own convictions."

This is a great place to start: "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." - Vincent Van Gogh. What's important in this quotation? Of course it is the inner voice - the source and cause of all art. He means what? He means that the entire enterprise is within you, and only emerges from that space. There's no outside reference required.  But go further into that idea: "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." - Pablo Picasso.  Once more, we see that the purpose is personal, and has no external authority. And maybe top it off with one more: "A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament." - Oscar Wilde.  Once more, we have the same persistent theme. Art is the internal process of our own unique desire to reveal ourselves from the inside out. Unique means one of a kind. No one can reveal their "self" when they have adopted the idea of emulating another. No one can 'dust the daily life off their own soul,' if they choose to imitate other lives. To do so, is to cancel out the unique result from a unique temperament.

Art reveals the artist. And as Ansel Adams said, "There are always two people in every picture:  the photographer and the viewer." Now we have to consider what it means for the photographer to be in the picture. Here's Richard Avedon on that subject: "My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph." As another accomplished photographer said, "Every photograph is of the photographer." And this idea of the internal cause of art could not be complete without this brilliant and pithy summation: "Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees." - Paul Strand.  Isn't it pitifully obvious to even a rank beginner of a photographer that you can't leave the record of your life by taking Cartier-Bresson's photographs?

The drive to reveal the self through imaginative physical manifestations, such as photography, is as old as any knowledge about the cause of art.  What's missing from the wisdom of all these aforementioned artists?  - external agency and authority.  The least required element in the cause of art is external approval. The following of their rules. The least useful strategy is ignoring the inner soul and mimicking others. That process of ignoring one's authenticity to adopt the garb and style of others produces artifacts, not art.

I am an artist, not because I received permission or approval for properly emulating other artists, but because I know how to 'wash the dust of daily life off my soul.' I am an artist not because I painstakingly memorized photographs of another artist to model for my own, but because I allow my unique temperament to produce the result.

There's an implication in your post that people should be embarrassed to claim their art on just the strength that they were the creator. You imagine that is something to laugh over, when in fact, that's the foundational meaning of art! That confusion relies on mistaking art with commercial artifacts. It assumes a person selling a photograph for a million dollars must be an artist, but the photographer working in obscurity couldn't possibly be so by "self proclamation." As if an artist couldn't know his own cause? Now THAT is a measure of how far astray one can be lead by assuming they ought to mimic the work of others.  That idea is running full speed in the wrong direction. It is running from self - the only place from which art can originate - and running to others, the only place your art can't be found!

You are correct in two things though. True, it doesn't matter if it is crap to some others - it's the authenticity that counts.  Being an artist is absolutely no guarantee that  others will like it or approve of it.  And secondly, yes, I DO feel good, thanks.
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Rob C

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #54 on: February 06, 2013, 03:53:17 am »

RedwoodGuy, I can throw words around just as easily and happily as can you; fortunately, I've spent enough time on this planet to realise that one is always going to bump into someone whose pleasure in the exchange of ideas lies not in the ideas but solely in argument for its own sake. At that realisation, I simply bow out gracefully and let the person carry on talking to the trees, the walls or whatever else fills his vision.

Life's too short for this, something else learned from the time on this planet.

Enjoy the echoes.

Rob C

RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #55 on: February 06, 2013, 04:08:03 am »

RedwoodGuy, I can throw words around just as easily and happily as can you; fortunately, I've spent enough time on this planet to realise that one is always going to bump into someone whose pleasure in the exchange of ideas lies not in the ideas but solely in argument for its own sake. At that realisation, I simply bow out gracefully and let the person carry on talking to the trees, the walls or whatever else fills his vision.

Life's too short for this, something else learned from the time on this planet.

Enjoy the echoes.

Rob C
That's ok Rob. Don't feel bad about it. It was a pretty steep hill to climb.
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RedwoodGuy

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #56 on: February 06, 2013, 04:17:05 am »

V-J in a way.
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stamper

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #57 on: February 06, 2013, 06:17:47 am »

Stamper, all four of these are good shots, but the artifacts have almost taken over the images in the last two. That, the foreshortening, and the square format make me suspect you of cropping!

Russ they aren't artifacts. It is smart sharpen for detail enhancement that may have been strengthened by the down sampling to jpeg. The jpeg compression was set at maximum in Save for web. However I do plead guilty to cropping.

jeremypayne

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #58 on: February 06, 2013, 06:21:56 am »

That's ok Rob. Don't feel bad about it. It was a pretty steep hill to climb.

Hah!  Touche.
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stamper

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Re: Love Real Street
« Reply #59 on: February 06, 2013, 06:28:15 am »

Jeremy, do you have anything to contribute to the thread or are you just here to practise your repertoire of one liners?
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