RE: [Leica] Street photography

["Bergman, Mark A." <mabergm@nppd.com>]

I tend to think it's society.  I like using large format for landscape and
over the last few years strange thinks have been happening.  Farmers in
Nebraska tend to be pretty friendly but when I set up the tripod and LF
camera (and imagine being in the middle of nowhere) the farmer will come
roaring up in his truck demanding to know what I'm doing.  Most times when I
show him it's a camera and I'm a nobody with a hobby they'll back off.
Lately though I'm afraid some are going to shoot.

And I'm talking being a mile from the nearest building, no one in sight,
taking a picture of a cornfield.  Kind of creepy.

- -----Original Message-----
From: Brian Reid [mailto:reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 3:33 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] Street photography


In my younger years I did a lot of street photography with my IIIf and with 
a Canon P. I enjoyed it a lot and I have thousands of pictures in my vaults.

I'm 50 now. I have from time to time tried street photography recently, and 
I find that I just can't get it to work any more.

For me, street photography meant forming an instantaneous bond of some kind 
with a person on the street and then taking his or her picture, and then 
walking on. What it means to "get it to work" is that I look somebody in 
the eye, let them see my camera, they look back at me, and I photograph 
them. I've never much cared for the kind of photography in which the 
subject does not know that he is being photographed.

About 3 years ago I was in Rome trying to be a street photographer, and a 
friend who was with me said "you look like a plainclothes policeman or a 
spy; everyone is afraid of you". Several times since then I've asked 
friends to comment on what they see when I point cameras at people on the 
street, and they've said the same thing: "people react to you as if you 
were a policeman or a government official; they instinctively hide."

So I guess I have the wrong appearance to be a street photographer. I look 
too official. Since I used to be able to do it, and I think I did it well, 
I know that something has changed. But I think the change is in me and not 
in society.

Brian