Street Photography

(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

I've always admired the work of great street photographers like Gary Winogrand.

This is a photo I happened to take myself a few months ago. To see quite a few more (by other people) just search Flickr for "street photography".

Looking online, I've found endless discussion about the techniques and ethics of street photography. This discussion thread on Photo.net is interesting. And this PDF book by Chris Weeks, Street Photography for the Purist is quite rich, with illustrated intros by several other street photographers. I found both these links, by the way, in the Wikipedia article on Street Photography.

[#1 posted by Cpt. Tim, May 27, 2009 2:00 PM]

I'm in san francisco and we took over the streets yesterday after the prop 8 ruling. I took this picture in the Castro right before sundown and i'm in love with it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/captaintim/3569542958/

[#2 posted by Piers W, May 27, 2009 4:40 PM]

As with all great artists, once you've seen a Gary Winogrand photo, you never see and think in the same way again. Ever since I did, it has been a conscious decision to hold the camera horizontal to the picture plane.

[#3 posted by Anonymous, May 27, 2009 6:32 PM]

I read Street Photography for the purist a while ago. A big pile of dung, IMO. Too much emphasis on the medium, too little on art. Expensive 35mm rangefinders loaded with B&W film aren't a prerequisite for good street photography - you can do great stuff with a cheap digicam. Actually, I like digicams better than dslrs for street work.

[#4 posted by wakaman, May 28, 2009 7:16 AM]

A friend of mine has been shooting some AMAZING street photography in NYC. She has a real eye for this stuff: http://mynycincolor.com/

The people she shoots just ooze nyc.

[#5 posted by erikswedberg, May 28, 2009 8:25 PM]

more street photography:
http://www.ryanbrown.net/

[#6 posted by earth, May 28, 2009 10:39 PM]

If you'd like to see some very non-traditional, but still quite "street" photography, you might take a gander over here:

http://www.earthsworld.com

[#7 posted by coolinbox, July 10, 2009 11:55 PM]

Glad to see this post. Here's my 2 cents...
Las Vegas Street Photography in black and white and color. The other side of the Las Vegas lights...

http://www.kenlamug.com/

[#8 posted by MarekVX, July 27, 2009 10:46 PM]

I am not sure if street photography can be defined as a single, easily identifiable genre. Just compare MarkusHartel and
Ted Szukalski. You have NY views from Markus and Sydney shots from Ted. Both show a variety of approaches and seem to ignore any "rules" or conventions. You have everything there: colour and black and white, singular character portraits and juxtaposition and yet both retain some strong individuality in the way they photograph "their" worlds.