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Street photography is an approach to photography instead of a location, though the streets are the common place that it occurs. “When I saw the picture of Munkacsi of the black children running in a wave I could not believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I asserted damn it; I took my camera and went out into the street.” Henri Cartier-Bresson. Or it is referred to as no rules photography. The plethora of kit (tripods, lenses, filters, lights etc) related to “serious” photography is left at home, or better still in the camera store. It’s just too heavy and lumpish to cart around, takes far too long to line up and by the point it is set up the instant is gone. Street photography is shooting from the hip. Similarly the guidelines of picture, the f stops, the shutter speeds, the rule of 3rds etc are left in their dust jackets on Amazon shelves. By the point all of the technical concerns are considered, the birdie is in another country.

It is just the camera and the cameraman with their passion, intuition and open mind. Street photography can be and regularly is: Out of focus, an angled horizon, a soft focus. Street photographers are optimists, for them the glass is always half full. They are going out on a photograph shoot with no plan in mind secure in the certainty that this wide sector of ours will supply.

A subject, a situation, a scene will present itself all they need to have is the presence of mind to capture it when it does. Street photography can be and frequently is: Strange things in the foreground, no central focus, and peculiar crops. Street photographers see the common, the each day with fresh eyes. Their minds are open to all of the stimuli that they see and they curse the times when they leave their camera at home. Street photography can be and often is: real busy, a slanted viewpoint, the other way up.

Street photographers aren’t only on the streets; they’re at weddings, school concerts, next to you on the train. They look a lot like travelers, it’s their favorite cover but they’re one without the massive flash. It was left at home, the available light will do. Street photography can be and regularly is: under exposed, blurred, affected by vertigo. Street photography is, what all photography is, a snap shot. What shines thru is the shutter-bug, his / her interpretation of the scene, what they see in the situation, their reaction to the stimuli, the art they see in the each day. Visible artists, whatever their medium, create photographs that stimulate the mind, the heart and countenance the human state in all its guises. Because, in fact, pretty is in the iris of the onlooker and hence extremely subjective, while art talks to all who are prepared to listen.

written by \\ tags: Non-Photographer, Street Photography