Street photography has always held a special interest for me. I like it
because I know it takes a special kind of photographer to be able to put
a stranger at ease for a photograph, and that has never been more true
than today. With the advent of security cameras and issues regarding
privacy, people today are definitely hesitant when it comes to a
stranger taking their picture.
Most street photography, however,
occurs without the consent and knowledge of the subjects. The movement
of people in an environment is frozen in the discovered dynamic found by
the photographer's lens. That is the beauty of the great street
photographs I know of.
If we look back just 40 or 50 years,
“modern day” street photographers like Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) or
Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) worked the streets, or stood in one spot until
the right person(s) happened to walk in front of their lens for what
they saw as their own “decisive moment.” Both shot constantly, quickly
and intuitively, and part of their technique was being quick and
non-obtrusive about it. Winogrand, for example, took hundreds and
hundreds of images a day, constantly moving and shooting in order to get
the shots he wanted.
