a Street Photography definition*  G. Mark Smith

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*Street Photography?

Street Photography is a fine art sport typically played in single-city territories throughout the world by people infected with the buzz of the flow. You might say that all roads will eventually lead you into the crosshairs of a street photographer's camera, for there are thousands of them -- -- here and there and everywhere ... ... ...

Some Street Photographers are driveby shooters, and this type often (out of fear, intimidation, insecurity, anxiety, or guilt) shoots wildly from the hip as they cruise the walkways of cities. Often going against the flow of their quarry and always careful to put themselves in an advantageous position for an escape if caught by the wounded while sneaking a shot.

       Other Street Photographers are snipers, and this sort uses extra long lenses to conceal themselves and to stay even more detached from the prey they're spying on than the driveby shooters.

A third sort of street photographer (most rare) are the Stalkers, the type who intentionally attach themselves to and who meander amongst their quarry (at ease, unafraid and without guilt) and who reconnoiter the territories they shoot at length to effectively haunt the streets they work on so closely and so quietly and so assuredly --- that they become just another element of the environment --- nearly invisible by streetphoto standards.  And the resulting substantive images that a Stalker bags for all the effort while out in the midst of the bustle -- taking the time to become part of the street and then artfully composing and elaborating converging candid elements into visually bold and intellectually stimulating notions about life out on the streets --- well, at their best these images are involved and empathetic and they command more detailed exploration during the discovery of the everyday us recognizable in the work. Carefully anticipated serendipity about contemporary life that when willfully composed and appropriately frozen -- mixing the skills of street credibility and documentary craft with the formal elements yet untamed nature of art -- becomes captivatingly smart and pleasurably interactive in the buzz of the sharing.

*WWW.Streetphoto.com has always thought
that street photography should be a contact sport

Streetphoto.com would never endorse covert sniping and will only pull a sporadic accidental driveby shooting now and then itself, because www.Streetphoto.com has made a pledge of quality, we prefer to Stalk the elements of our art, typically from within spitting distance of the wrath of nature and man. www.Streetphoto.com  has always thought that street photography should be a contact sport anyway, and from our experience -- it's worth the risk -- because that's how the most powerful street photographs occur. And aside from the pledge of never sacrificing access for safety, or never sacrificing the aesthetic formulas of fine art for antiquated post-modern indifference --- www.Streetphoto.com has distinguished itself by stretching the traditional provincial territories of the historical sport of street photography by including nearly every kind of street on the face of the Earth

During its lifelong street photography compulsion www.Streetphoto.com (with an assist from the cheapening event of Airline Deregulation that occurred about the time we got started) has taken this several-generation fine art Global -- and nobody does Global like www.Streetphoto.com - - -

 
*The Most Far-Flung Street Photography Website in All the Land
Stalking the Streets of the World Since 1978

 

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