Re: [Leica] street photography

[Mike Quinn <mlquinn@san.rr.com>]

I Disagree completely (for a change).

Recognizing an scene as worth recording is nothing like laughing at it or
feeling superior to it. It's just the opposite. We record images because we
appreciate them and want to preserve them. We prefer to be inconspicuous
because we have limited interest in images of people responding to us as we
intrude in their lives.

I think both approaches are useful. For portraits, we interact with the
subject and spend hours getting him/her to display an image we know is in
there, but may be transient and hard to capture.
In street photography we try to capture the transient image without the
interaction.

Neither is disrespectful.

Mike Quinn    

Bmceowen@aol.com wrote:

> Man, it sure seems like it with all the concern about being inconspicuous
> while you're shooting. Also it seems that there is an attitude that goes
> along with the genre that the subjects of the photos are just so much human
> debris that grace the photographer by passing through the frame. Put another
> way it seems like "street photographers" view people on the street as
> merchandise to be collected on film or fodder for their photographic
> appetite. Maybe that's not the case but that's certainly the image one gets
> sometimes. I, for one, have certainly gotten the impression that street
> photographers are laughing at their subjects or at least feeling superior to
> them. If nothing else you guys have an "image" problem.