Street Photography: Wrong!

I enjoyed this recent post by Blake Andrews*.

It does point out a real source of inspiration: breaking rules. Doing what you're not supposed to do can be an excellent source of ideas. I wish there were more rules, so there would be more to break. Which is why Blake's post resonates, I guess, duh.

Photo by William Klein. Commentary added.

Mike

*I've been trying to create a short list of sites to visit regularly. It's hard. There are many worthy ones, yet I know if I let my list grow too long then I won't visit any of them. But how do you winnow all photography sites down to eight or ten? Not easy.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JL: "Do you know this painting by John Baldessari? Very famous in art circles: not sure if it is in photography circles too."

Benjamin Marks: "I don't know whether this will be helpful or not, but my general criterion when evaluating any artwork (could be photography, could be music, could be ballet) is, 'Does this touch me, distract me, or make me feel something?' If the answer is yes, the next question is 'why?' Sometimes that answer is a triumph of technique, sometimes it is independent of technique. Sometimes my response is caused precisely by a rule being trounced in a delightful way. And sometimes a 'rule' is really just a practice that all of us sheeplike nudniks fall into because it is the received wisdom. Man, is it great when someone shines the bright light of a creative mind on that state of affairs.

"I guess the distinction I would make is that when rules are broken—compositional rules, rules related to narrative structure, grammatical rules, whatever—is that the 'breaking' has to work. In all of the cases cited by Mr. Andrews they do. I'll note that Mr. Klien's successful prosecution of that image of the kid with the gun has not inspired a lot of copycats, at least none of which I am aware.

"The other thing about 'rules' is that their breaking sometimes comes during the act seeing the raw image and sometimes comes in the editing process. The genius of the Gare St. Lazarre picture has always seemed to me the ability to see the final image in the original frame. If I am honest with myself, I don't think I would have seen it. I might well have looked at the contact page in the loupe and said—in my 1/4 second evaluation, 'Too bad. The subject is out of focus,' and moved on to the next one. This is a great example of the difference between 'looking' and 'seeing.'"

Mike replies: Maybe this is the editor in me speaking, but I think we get into trouble in this argument because of the word "rule," which suggest a dictate by some authority with power. It's like the phrase "laws of physics," in which "laws" is simply and flatly the wrong word.

Street photography rules are actually rules of thumb. Wikipedia defines "rule of thumb" as "a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation." They suggest comparing it to heuristic, which means "experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery that give a solution which is not guaranteed to be optimal."

In other words, street photography rules are really...suggestions.

And in fact, when I read all the "rules" that Blake is lampooning, I think they're all pretty good guidelines. For example, it's true that a lot of street photographers are satisfied photographing peoples' backs, and this is probably because they're too polite or too reticent to confront their subjects and let their subjects know they're photographing them. If this is a constant (or at least consistent) in someone's work, it is indeed something he or she would be better off being aware of, hopefully to try to overcome.

It doesn't actually mean that anyone is prohibited from photographing anyone's back, or that photographs which prominently feature a subject's back can't be good ones (since we were just discussing Karsh, his portrait of Pablo Casals comes to mind. Google "Karsh Casals" if you don't know the picture. Of course that's not a street photograph).

Rules/suggestions are meant to be helpful, so if we dismiss them then it seems evident that we're cutting ourselves off from any help they might offer. Which might not be the best course, for those of us who are not geniuses.

The best overall suggestion might be "know the 'rules' and break them knowingly."

Marcus: "Start with TOP, see where it leads."

Mike replies:  :-)

Jimmy Reina: "I think I have posted this before, but the issue of rules never seems to die. One evening at my camera club, someone showed a picture of a rowboat on a body of water, with the setting sun on the horizon in the background. As I recall, the image was well composed and exposed. As you would expect, the setting sun was pretty colorful, both in the sky and reflected in the water. Someone commented, 'you should never point your camera into the sun.' It was a picture of a sunset—where else could you point it?"

Comments

[Paul Parkinson]

Why visit them? Why not have them come to you? If you use RSS and a good RSS Reader (I use Feedly) then, as and when a site updates the changed/added/new information comes to you.

[JohnMFlores]

Try Feedly.com. It's a pretty good news reader. After a little setup, you can efficiently peruse as many sites as you'd like. It's still a deluge, but a more controlled deluge.

[Dave Jenkins]

I'll be interested to see what you come up with. In addition to TOP (you do sometimes visit that one, don't you?) there's Kirk Tuck's blog, also the Rangefinder Forum, The Online Darkroom, Dave Beckerman, Ken Rockwell, Luminous Landscape, Photography on the Net, mu-43.com (micro 4/3s), and ex-DWF, the Facebook group for former members of the Digital Wedding Forum. I have a long list of others I check occasionally.

[Dennis]

You're one up on the rest of us, because you don't have to count TOP in your eight or ten ;)

[Albano]

I read Blake's post and inmediately remembered your old post about what HCB and other classics would receive as feedback in online forums. Its the same principle, how ridicule clichés and fixed ideas are, specially when you see masters work.

[Mike Plews]

"I didn't write the rules; why should I follow them?"
W. Eugene Smith

[Bob Dales]

What a great list! I now have a Street Project:
A. Make my own example of violating each rule*.
B. Make examples of violating as many rules as possible in a single photograph.

* including, by default, the anti-Winnogard rule.

bd

PS Blake made his list in response to difficulties defining Street Photography. That's easy: def Street photography is NOT any of the following; Landscape, Family, Sports, Studio, Wedding, Event, Architecture, Abstract Photography. Nor is it Photo Journalism which is street photography for pay.

[Manuel]

I read it. It was loads of fun. Unfortunately, judging by some comments on that post, there are lots of people who won't recognize a satire even if it bites them on the leg.
You know the old saying: "Oh well..."

[Kevin Purcell]

And don't forget to read the comments too ... they're the best bit.

[Kevin Purcell]

And the follow up post:

http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2014/05/into-pool.html

[Charles]

There are a lot of things in life which I consider "painting a bridge" type tasks. As soon as the task is completed it's time to start over. Finding the best fish taco on the west coast for instance is a painting the bridge task, one I would rather enjoy. Finding the 10 best photo sites...not so much.

[Dale]

A short list is good. After that, don't try to winnow the rest down. Bookmark them all. Just work down the list; five each day. In one year you'll hit 1825 sites. It's not so tiring that way.

[D. Hufford.]

I saw this recently and was amused by the comments of those irritated by it. Yes, there are many rules while are "enforced" on the Internet as to what constitutes one type of photography or another, the type of camera one must use etc. Part of the fun of breaking rules (for a reason) is to see/read the reactions of those irritated----infuriated---at the breakage.

[Mike Green]

Blake might want to take a leaf out of your book and use the SA* system. It's surprising how some people's interpretation of a blog post differs from my own and, I suspect, the writer's.

[Norman Vujevic]

I have about 15 blogs on my short list. Active ,interesting blogs levitate toward top. Some bloggers post monthly and my rule is "If you don't have time-I don't have time". Strobist comes to mind,just went from third to number 14. When my morning coffee is done my blogging is done. TOP is doing rather well, by the way.

[c. lund]

8. Street photographs must depict people. But not street performers, buskers, homeless, or other common sidewalk denizens. Fish in a barrel. Prohibited.

Personally I do indeed have a problem with people taking photos of homeless. They are on the bottom of the social ladder, used to get (mis)used. I don't see any reasons, for bored middle class people with aspiration to be edgy, to use them more. To those middle class bored, I would instead suggest that they should take photos of the police or gangs instead. These groups have often very clear ideas, of how they want to, or not, be used.

But if you are a photographer as for example Jacob A. Riis who wants something more than a good motive, then by all means go a head and shoot.

[V. Roma]

Please post your list!

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Not nearly as sharp of humor as your classic 2006 Great Photographers on the Internet piece.

[Herman Krieger]

Does this mean that photographing peoples' backs is getting it ass backwards?

[G Dan Mitchell]

Benjamin Marks wrote: "And sometimes a 'rule' is really just a practice that all of us sheeplike nudniks fall into because it is the received wisdom."

Actually, in the arts world, that is PRECISELY where the supposed rules come from. They never were conceived as rules. They were simply things that worked, among many other things that worked, and which eventually became recognized because they come up so often. They aren't so much rules as they are "tendencies," or "observations about things," or "options you can try."

[Sven W]

"There is only photographic rule that should never be broken: respect your subjects"

-- Cheryl Jacobs