Street Addiction

More often than not a good photo depends on factors beyond your control. If you have good skills, some talent and are diligent you can boost the odds a little, but the bottom line is Street photography is gambling.

When I first started out I struggled for a few months until I figured out the basics and then, although I didn't appreciate it at the time, I had an incredible run of luck. True, I wasn't as discerning as I am now, and I had yet to harvest all the low hanging SP fruit, but putting that aside, I had a remarkable string of luck.

I now consider myself a journeyman Street Photographer, and as such I've had to come to grips with the reality that getting one good shot in five hundred is for this game, not bad. It's like all this time I thought I was playing chess but was really playing Chinese Checkers. My initial beginner's luck skewed my judgement on how big a factor luck actually plays in SP. Yes skill matters, but you can't photograph what's not there. Are you willing to bet five hundred times, a thousand times, before you get a hit?

Are you feeling lucky? Come on, maybe around the next corner, or just down the street, just one more shot, just one, just one more shot and you'll be even for all the time and shoe leather. All you need is just a little luck.

Split Decision

I had only a narrow angle to aim without shooting into harsh sunlight and waited to the last second to raise and thus reveal the camea. They first hesitated, bunching up, then one turned away while the other one tried to bolt.
Most people when confronted by a stranger pointing a camera at them will either try to:

HIDE by turning away from the camera or blocking their face.
or RUN by walking briskly through or around the spot where the camera is aimed.

In this case it was a split decision.
I took this snap several years ago, and while I like the play of horizontal and vertical lines on the shirts and how the "hider" appears to be contemplating the checkered wall, today I probably wouldn't bother taking the snap. But at the time it was something of a turning point for me. I had successfully predicted their range of behaviour and had used it to my advantage.

The Quiet Iconoclast

The city is a grid where -like data points on a graph - people move about.Moving as directed, as planned, as predicted save for the Quiet Iconoclasts - those with their nascent nudges of non compliance.Like a jay walker caught in a swath of morning light.

the quiet iconoclasts, the data points that fall off the line.

Breaking News!

A Decisive Moment was narrowly averted today when an alert Insecurity Guardian detained a would-be Imagist found with nearly two-and-a-half pounds of plastic Nikon strapped to his wrist. The suspect appeared to be a street photographer and had concealed on a memory card various jpegs of conscientious consumers carrying shopping bags, swaddled in cell phone cocoons or drip fed from latte cups.

This kind of jpeg, Investigators warned, can easily be uploaded and viewed electronically by foreign operatives. A spokesman for the HomeLand Profit Alliance stated that all persons not conspicously consuming will be prosecuted regardless of the law and those found carrying cameras could face water boarding.