I am always looking for a story that I can crawl into. I make my living as an actor and a teacher of acting and my professional deformation is to reveal what lies beneath the surface of a character. So I have an insatiable curiosity about other people’s lives. How do you get through your day? What do you do? What do you think about? As a photographer observing behavior and telling myself stories about what I see on the streets keeps me in the zone of discovery. I’ve often wondered if I’ve
Making Street Photos without People
Do all street photographs have to include people? That question alone can spark lots of discussion in online forums. But my answer is “not necessarily.” When you think about it, our objective as photographers is to share our own unique vision of the world. If enjoy shooting subjects in public places without people fit your vision go for it. On the practical side shooting scenes without people gives you more control and time. You have the ability to visit the scene at different times of
Shutter Magic
For me, street photography means seeing ordinary things as unusual. Yes, I can't find better words to describe it. Certainly, photography is also a journey; new discoveries, surprises and movement, photography is full of mistakes and terrible shots but it is also the best shots in life! Photography is an experience that each of us abnormal eccentrics are looking for with a camera in our hands, just like drug addicts searching for their dose. The camera makes us go ahead, run, find points of
Sweet Life
When I first came across the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken, I didn’t know what to make of him. I’d been a great admirer (like countless others) of Cartier Bresson’s work, which I considered a kind of poetic realism. You always know what you’re looking at in a Cartier Bresson shot. He stands back, shows you the reality he sees. Does it with grace and an uncanny sense of harmony. If that’s what you’re used to and like, though, van der Elsken can throw you. He couldn’t be more different. He
Footprints of Man – Street Photos Without People
Last February we traveled to Philadelphia to visit our son. I’ve been there many times but never to Center City. So we used this as an opportunity to stay in this very historic and interesting part of town. To make it a family affair, my daughter took the train from Virginia which gave us an opportunity to all be together for the first time in quite a while. This visit resulted in a photographic epiphany for me. My best street photography opportunity was Sunday morning when my daughter was
The Narrow Line Between Documenting and Exploiting in Photography
All photographs were photographed on film. Photography as we all know, is an extremely unconcealed medium with a conclusion showing a vision realized after the Moment has happened. Once the shutter button feels the aftermath of pressure being applied, the latent image, the image, the photograph has escaped. Even when private photographs are placed into the safes our own private spaces, our eyes will privately revisit what was photographed. When the photograph becomes famous, the world has its
Mitani Monogatari
Changing life, who never dreamt about it? That’s what I am trying to do. I’ve grown bored with my “salaryman” life. Because I don’t have the skills for it. Because I’ve grown tired of it. Because it doesn’t meet my expectations anymore. I left the big city, the noise, and turmoil. I went to the country, the silence, and peace. I moved to my wife’s parents’ place. It is a different world here. It is in the middle of the country. It is in the middle of the mountains. It is in the
The New York Photo League of the 1930s
It’s a curious thing, the street. You almost can’t say what it is. For sure it’s more than the pavement on which folks walk. Or the blacktop surface on which cars drive. The street really is the coming together of many things. It’s the packed-in tenements or apartment houses in a big city. It’s even the rooftops of those houses. Because folks go up on the rooftops at night to escape the heat of summer. It’s the fire hydrant or Johnny pump turned on, on those hot summer days. It’s the grocery
A Journey Led by Street Photography
A Journey Begins My name is Ehsan Hemmati, I was born in 1980 in Kermanshah, Iran. My love for photography goes all the back to my childhood. I remember how I enjoyed taking photos with our family camera. Film was expensive and my family believed I shouldn't waste photos on cats and trees. Eventually, I saved some money and bought a used SLR camera when I was 16. I bought some film and that’s how my journey began. Later I tried out many different cameras and new gear hoping to become a
Paul McElroy – Irish Street Photography Group Photo Contest Winner
I loved the theme 'Windows Reflection' as I knew essentially I would be taking two photos in one, the subject and the reflection. I guess like a lot of street photography is having that quick eye to see and capture that unique image and I saw this solitude gentleman in a coffee shop on Westmorland Street in Dublin, just looking out at the world going by. He didn't move for about 20 seconds and so I was able to take lots of shots so I wanted to capture the busy people walking in the reflection.
The Hidden Harmony
The “hidden harmony” was an intuition of Heraclitus, one of the most major thinkers of Ancient Greece, who lived between 500 and 400 B.C. Heraclitus believed that there was a First Principle or Origin from which everything in existence began, and that everything is regulated by an eternal law, the logos. However, Heraclitus affirmed that the Origin loves to hide herself, which means that she appears in things and can be “seen”, not through thinking or reflection, but rather only through total