Rob, First, from what I've read, "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare," which is the title of that shot, wasn't something HCB made by sticking his camera through a fence. His book, Scrapbook, which his second wife, Martine Franck, salvaged, has a more expanded version -- I don't have time to go upstairs and look right now, but I think it's a version of the contact sheet. What that shows is a post off to the left that he didn't have time to move away from. I think he was walking down the alley, saw the guy about to jump off the end of the board, lifted his camera and shot. I've done enough snap shots like that to know exactly what it's like. I can feel what he did. The "luck" he's talking about is the luck you have when suddenly you see something like that. Once you see it, making the shot isn't luck. It requires that you be absolutely familiar with your equipment. If you have to think -- about anything: the camera, the lighting, etc., you've lost the shot.
I agree with Fred. There wouldn't be any point in doing a mock fashion series with an amateur model. But street photography is different. You're not setting anything up. You're looking for something that makes you respond on the spur of the instant. For me, loving it is sufficient. The reason I'm such a lousy marketer is that I just don't give a damn about selling prints. Oh, it's nice when I do, but it's nothing like the rush I get when I catch something I really like. It's pretty easy to put together a collection of shots to send to a contest, but it's a hassle to try to convince a gallery owner that she'd like to carry my stuff on consignment, so I don't do much marketing. I'd much rather spend my time out on the street looking for the year's winner: like "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare."
But I know that's not for everyone. Most people would rather do things like landscape where they have plenty of time to set everything up, don't have to worry about someone speaking nastily to them, and hope to end up with something pretty to hang on the wall. For the most part my walls have people on them. They're not awfully pretty, but to me they're beautiful. As I've said before, I think people and their artifacts are a hell of a lot more interesting than rocks and vegetables.