let us now catalogue famous people

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/in-south-korea-where-digital-tattling-is-a-growth-industry.html?pagewanted=all

I should take my creepin' skills to south korea

this dude

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/highlights/slideShow.jsp?page=1

similarly

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/rediscovering-the-urban-palette/

mostly for this shot

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/28/blogs/20110928-NYColor-slide-AXH8/20110928-NYColor-slide-AXH8-custom1.jpg

wow
yeah the guy i linked was also in a lot of ways 'instances of alluringly coloured photography' as much as 'check this dude', on account of i guess his kodachrome smarts

http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/adrian-fisk-what-are-young-chinese-thinking-about.html

I'm not a fan of portraiture in general but this series ~speaks to me~

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-29.jpg

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-15.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/k4rOQ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KkajI.jpg

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-13.jpg

potentially valuable ilx poster

goddammit
http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-13.jpg

into these btw

I'm not a fan of portraiture in general

?
just less so than you are of kind of 'live' photography, or?

it's just really hard to get right for the right effect, imo

I'll probably grant the environmental portraiture > studio portraiture

http://i.imgur.com/kikPf.jpg

to suburbs thread

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-27.jpg

^^ the right effect in five different ways

sure, yeah. i don't really, off the top of my head, have a portrait photographer i'm dying to throw at you to argue it, anyhow. i don't think i really make a big division between people who are taking 'environmental portraits' & just photographers, really - like i could sit walker evans in either because it's sorta both, where as studio isn't.

now that I've had 5 more seconds to think about it, I think it's because of the formalistic nature of the genre that it's really easy to fall into cliche. not that it isn't easy to fall into cliche with all the other genres of photography out there. but you really need to think about how to jazz up the same, head-on shot that has been done so many times before.

i don't have any strong feelings about portraiture, but i guess that when a portrait evokes any kind of response from me, it's almost exclusively a reaction to the subject, and not the photo itself. like, a momentary ignorance of artifice, just str8 lookin at a dude, wondering what he's thinkin baout. which is also why portraiture can be sorta boring---it's static pictures of people just sitting there, being people.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/tyler-hicks-a-decade-in-afghanistan/

worth it as much for the accompanying text as for the pictures

when a portrait evokes any kind of response from me, it's almost exclusively a reaction to the subject, and not the photo itself. like, a momentary ignorance of artifice, just str8 lookin at a dude, wondering what he's thinkin baout. which is also why portraiture can be sorta boring---it's static pictures of people just sitting there, being people.

this is interesting - i'm still not really arguing either way, like vehemently in favour of portraiture or anything, bc i haven't thought about it much since the above was posted, but i wonder if there's a big dividing line, here, between photography you like & photography you take - because i think if you take a portrait of a friend or some family or whatever and you really nail someone, totally get what they're like, encompass their essence/tendency towards gazing into the distance/whatever, then that's a huge achievement & can feel as successful as any photography (obviously, you can achieve the same in non-portraiture, capturing a gesture or even better a kinda significant moment between people or whatever). but then if you're dealing with portrait photography you've seen, of people you don't know, then you have a different standard - like 'wow that totally nails beckett, what a grizzly old intense dude' etc. i don't know. i say all this because, i think i have said this on here before, i have got way more into trying to capture things about people i know when taking photos than be part of a bigger effort focusing on like 'humans' or 'society' or w/e. maybe plax's stuff is the same?, idk, like it isn't that it is or isn't portraiture, but that it's dedicated to getting that str8-lookin-at-a-dude thing, which is especially powerful when you know them.

love the bike in this:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/10/09/international/09cnd-afghan.2.large.jpg

oh there's no doubt that a personal connection to the subject of a portrait outside the picture itself strengthens and colors the way you look at that portrait.

portrait portrait portrait

sure, & it feels obvious to even say so. but just i wonder whether, if the chief thing you're trying to elicit with portraiture is that sense of understanding or curiosity or capture, maybe it's a harder thing to either objectively judge or feel the appropriate connection to as with non-portrait photography, & so it's something that's going to be most successful 'locally'. not really - bc i guess the great portrait photographers of famous dudes (inc HCB, right) are also capturing a thing, albeit perhaps based on what's known of them publicly - but kinda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/arts/design/25hipsters.html

the writing here seems a little savage, but it's sorta interesting to me, esp in light of

There is a paradox in Levinstein’s approach that is shared by legions of greater and lesser street photographers: he was hunting for the poetry of real life, but what he shot was generally the sort of thing that street photographers generally shoot. Not the types of people or situations that you barely notice because they are so ordinary, but people who seem strange, marginal or ridiculous.

it's the kind of criticism that has me scurrying to my collection, acutely self-conscious. i think i'm doubly sensitive because lately i have been thinking unkind things about some of my IRL bros photo sensibilities and i'm like "check yrself dude"

Not the types of people or situations that you barely notice

tbf this is becoming pretty common in online street photography circles as well.

xp that's the diane arbus critique, isn't it? that since her, why even bother? I too am pretty self-conscious about that... it's a tough call for a line-judge, you're trying to decide if there's something more beyond the inherent 'weirdness' that is worth photographing, committing to the medium...

I guess personally like compositional "interestingness" as well as ordinary/offbeat subject matter

there is real skill in being able to make souffle out of an egg. it's hard. really the answer is to not even think about that, to just take the photo and decide later in the editing stage.

Boy I really would not worry too much about whether it is more representative of life to shoot "interesting" or "mundane" subjects. Either way you're doing a lot of editing before during and after taking the picture and either way it's a big fiction.
What annoys me about a lot of street photography (especially the current revival as seen on In-Public and all) is the reliance on cleverness and visual puns. I know I'm the guy who just posted the photo of the woman behind the plant, but still...

Like there's a wittiness arms race going on.

true, true xps to dayo but to you too chinavision, really

also thought it interesting that the "best" photo in that exhibit (the handball one) was compared v favorably to HCB, who is an interesting counterpoint to the arbus/weirdness thing. because HCB is so frequently mentioned in terms of timing and the decisive moment (like, it's obligatory), it's hard to dismiss something as being "too much like HCB" or retreading the same ground or what have you. the exceptional qualities of his most famous works aren't as deeply grounded in subject matter as arbus or eggleston, nor does he have a particular formal axe to grind. they're just, uh, moments.

i think this is what elevates merely good street photography to great---it can't just be that the subject is interesting, or that the picture is well-framed. there has to be a sense that, had the photographer been just a split second later, the photo could never have been made. and, of course, that there is no possible way to recreate it ~just so~. like for me personally i think i have like three photos where, looking back, i'm like "man i can't believe i timed that right"

I know I'm the guy who just posted the photo of the woman behind the plant, but still...

i love this photo btw!

either way it's a big fiction.

^^^u&k

Like there's a wittiness arms race going on.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Thursday, October 6, 2011 12:51 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh yeah this totally bothers me too. really hate it that nick turpin has become the 'voice' of modern street photography based on a career of finding barber poles and waiting for someone to walk by who also happens to be wearing a striped shirt.

otoh if you look at some of the other dominant factions like HCSP they've also got this particular winograndian 'aesthetic' that gets pretty old after a while too.

I've been meaning to start a thread about the winogrand revival - maybe I'll do that later today

man i need to get myself to the library and do some learnin' because i probably haven't seen more than 3-4 of any of the ppl you guys talk about in these threads

http://www.in-public.com/NickTurpin

in-public is a 'collective' of street photographers

http://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/

every once in a while a good photo gets in

I think I respond most strongly to the *look* of a picture, followed much later by subject matter. This is something that I like about Friedlander, who can seemingly take any urban or rural location and construct a tangle of wires, poles, branches, shadows etc. in a beautiful way that seems like it should be simple but I can never replicate no matter how hard I try. It's also what I like about Meyerowitz's color street photos: they simply look beautiful apart from the subject matter. The framing and timing are part of that of course. A lot of current street photography looks like it comes from people who are just not moved by those same concerns *at all*. And so when I see a funny/clever visual pun I think, hey that's funny/clever but I have no desire or need to look at that photo ever again.

This is now a big xpost

yeah - those pics are called one-liners and feel like the photographic equivalent of m&ms.

see i usually respond the same way, except, as noted above, with portraiture. xp

And I was going to call out the In-Public stuff earlier. That and the Hardcore Street Photography group of flickr are two things I deeply dislike these days. At least Nick Turpin seems like a friendly guy. The HCSP discourse is often ugly. Makes street photography seem like a sport in which you earn points by being tough enough to get in the subject's face the most. Like somehow they've actually turned it into a macho thing.

ew

The fact that it's called "Hardcore Street Photography" is just ugh.

btw guys ILP is like my favorite subboard these days

yeah the discussion on HCSP is kind of shameful but they do highlight interesting projects sometimes in the forum. that said,

http://vimeo.com/29361738

this guy, who is held in 'high esteem' by the group, comes off as REALLY bad in this video

I used to think he had some pretty good stuff - knowing how he gets them, by channeling the Big Swinging Dick mentality of a lawyer/i-banker, is ugh. bruce gilden blew the balloon up pretty tight on that - no need to go further.

as far as visual puns go - after elliott erwitt, why bother?

btw out of curiosity: do you guys own prints of anyone? seems like most reproductions of good photographs are either dumb posters are crazy expensive limited run duplications or w/e

(nb i don't actually know anything)

I buy photobooks - usually when they're mentioned on TOP. printing tech is really good these days. a university library or even a public library is good for getting copies of OOP books, but not always. I wish someone would scan winogrand's 1964 already.