Re: [Leica] To SP or not SP

["Jeffery L. Smith" <jsmith45@bellsouth.net>]

Martin,

True, there are many places in New Orleans that I have yet to discover. It 
is the downtown area that is really terribly limited. When shooting scenic 
stuff, I often hop in the car and take a trip to nowhere, just to see what 
I'll encounter. Usually the trip succeeds in yielding something.

I do look at Winogrand's images (first name with two r's) and HCB's images 
for inspiration. But the cityscapes in those images are quite different 
from New Orleans. Los Angeles looks right in B&W, and New Orleans probably 
looks better in color. I've thought about taking the M3 into some rougher 
areas, with dog Judy in tow (she has a marvelous hate stare). Wherever I 
go, I won't know if it's right until I get there, and I won't get there if 
I don't start walking.

Jeffery

P.S. - I'm an academician as well, and not in the Fine Arts. Parasitology. 
And you don't want to see that in color or B&W. :-)

At 02:53 PM 1/6/2003 -0800, you wrote:

>Jeffrey Smith wrote something that seemed to suggest that street 
>photography (SP) in New Orleans is difficult because it's limited in size.
>
>I, of course, disagree.
>
>There are a lot of SP chichés out there.  A lot of discussion around SP 
>tends to make the assumption that, unless you're doing the in-yer-face, 
>funky-angle, Gary Winogrand thang, you're not really doing street 
>photography. (BTW: How does the man spell his name!?)
>
>Of course, nothing could be more wrong.
>
>Following chichés is easy, which is why you find endless numbers of 
>500-page paperback novels in the adventure and sci-fi sections of 
>bookstores.  What is difficult is going beyond them.
>
>I'll preface all of this by saying that I am not an SP photographer (hell, 
>I'm not even a photographer!).  I'm in academia, which means I've made a 
>career out of telling others how they should do what I myself do badly, so 
>take the following with an appropriate grain of salt.
>
>To me, SP is about documenting life as it is in a public space.  Having 
>spent a little time in New Orleans, I know that it has a fair number of 
>public spaces.  True, a number of them are "touristic", but that is part 
>of the city.  It's part of what makes New Orleans New Orleans.
>
>The challenge, then, is to think about how you'd photograph those public 
>spaces in such a manner that it captures whatever New Orleans means to 
>you.  It's about communicating that to the rest of us, so that we can see 
>*your* New Orleans.  You can't really go wrong: whatever you see is 
>whatever you see.
>
>I think the mark between good photographers and people like me who just 
>take pictures is consistency of vision.  When I look at the work of good 
>photographers, both living and dead, the hallmark seems to be that they 
>consistently shoot (or edit...) in a particular way.  Think not of 
>individual photographs, but in terms of a portfolio.  How does each image 
>fit into a great whole?
>
>One trick appears to be to settle on a particular small detail and then 
>pursue that ruthlessly.  People with dogs, perhaps.  Or the theme 
>"Lost".  Or "Contrast".  I think inspriation, creativity, and the mind as 
>a whole needs a foothold to get going -- otherwise to tend to be 
>overwhelmed by the possibilities and your stuff ends up all over the place 
>(I know mine does).
>
>Food for thought, and perhaps even inspiration?
>
>Good luck, in any case.
>
>M.
>
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