My rule of thumb is, if you'd print, frame, and mount an image the wall, then it's artistic. If not, it's documentary photography, but both are great shooting formats
These controversies are more fun than arguing about gear! Please keep at it. Maybe before you click the shutter is the time when knowing the difference between artistic and documentary street photography is most important. Intention one way or the other dictates the actual choices you make regarding settings, framing, timing &etc. It’s ok to edit afterward if doing so will further sculpt the image toward your initial intention. Once you present the image for someone to see, how they interpret it is out of your hands. But we should pay attention to how others interpret the image. We can use that feedback to help guide the choices we make before clicking the shutter next time. Or not. Another choice! What’s important is deciding whether our goal is to capture an image that portrays the facts of the scene as we are seeing it or those feelings the scene conjures within us. Before the shutter actuates.
I'm biased towards documentary but I would not exclude artistic approach either. It all depends on the situation in hand. So for me there is no better or worse. Interesting topic though. Thanks for sharing.
First, I like the ski cap with the "SUBSCRIBE" logo - LOL 😀. My "street photography" is neither when I'm making the image. When I'm post processing if I think the image stands on it's own then it might be documentary but if I do edits that "change" the image e.g remove an element, than it's more artistic. To me the distinction is immaterial. Whatever I do in post processing is because I want the photo to reflect what I like, if others like it fine, if not that's fine too.
Yeah I agree. They both have their purpose. I think each moment/scene we encounter has its reason for being on or the other (or both). I tend to lean on the artistic side, since I don’t live in a bustling city like New York where you can literally just make photos of people all day. I have to be a lot more artistic and creative, sometimes making something seemingly “normal” or “boring”, become something artistic
Nice! Thanks for making this point about how geography, mobility & circumstances help determine which avenues of creativity we take. You put it so well. I’m right there with you. Due to where I’m at “artistic” vistas are wider, more plentiful and interesting to explore. Landscape photography? I shoot distant mountains, sweeping foregrounds, stunning shapes & deep shadows with close up & macro lenses. 😂
For some time I worked on discovering what "street photography." As best I could see is that it's pretty much documentary in that it documents things that happened. And it mostly includes people and/or domesticated animals. A street portrait isn't street photography, but my photograph of you making a street portrait probably is. This doesn't preclude the use of interesting elements such as reflections, framing (for example a gap between trees). I generally avoid that distinction and describe that part of my work as "urban photography." People welcome, but not required. I typically remove nothing except by cropping, I might use some local or targetted adjustments to reduce the impact of unwanted elements. I often hide stuff, whether with camera movement, focus effects or other devices. The intent is artistic, but arguably documentary. Even when I have shot a timelapse and combined selected frames to describe the passage of time. I have "The Conversation" where two men stood in front of my camera and discussed some business matter (I think, I wasn't listening) over a few minutes. The men are blurry (1 second exposures), the background is sharp and there are mysterious blurs as people walked through the shot. It's documentary - it happened - and it's accepted as art.
Of course Peter, almost any documentary image you take has an artistic element, it's 'in you'. For me, having a camera at work is not really feasible but there's an iPhone in my pocket and I take a documentary shot from time to time and sometimes I just see an image. I have a camera as a means of self expression, I can do so much more with it. For sure I do more street photography than any other genre and for me I am always looking for that interesting image that is generally a bit of both. Thumbs up for these kinds of discussions, so much better than gear-head stuff.
And what about arguing about "3" being the right figure to do street photography ? 🤣 I like the way your argument has shifted over the last 2/3 years. And thank you for bringing back the desire and the artistic at the heart of the images. 😍 Edit: please don't worry about "old images", rest and recover as best you can.
Always a slightly nuanced subject area I think. Documentary is what I do in so far as, it is what I set out to do. That doesn't have to exclude making an artistic shot if such an opportunity happens to arise. I would argue that the artistic shot is more likely to involve an abstraction of some kind within a scene and the result of this may not give much away with respect to place or time. The viewer may have no idea where it was taken for example, but it isolates elements of interest to creative effect. These days, I don't usually spend a whole lot of time framing up shots, you kind of see the main chance, the overall scene, lighting, goings on etc. that you want to capture and shoot from the hip to some extent. Art can still happen, but usually not realised until downloading the pictures afterwards. Sometimes you just get tin bum lucky
I doupt whether there is any real "Documentary Style" in Photography. Any Situation out there in the street is such a complex kind of meeting between arcitecture, people, maybe cars, animals, wheather, light, you name it yourselve. So there are always many stories to tell in any moment. In choosing one or two of them, the photographer can't help, becoming an "artistic" storyteller, because if he trys to show everything, what is going on in some kind of "Documetary Style", he will tell no story at all. To me Photography is always a personal style of melting down reality to the story of my interest, whatever style of showing this story I might choose. It remains subjective and asks for resonance in the viewers mind.
it should be documentary, for art it's token, it would turn into run of the mill, documentary would yield in capturing art in subject matter and for editing, shooting for art would yield numerous clichés behind the editing
We humans are a funny lot. We try to make sense of the world by creating a sense of order and attempting to pigeon-hole everything. In life, events happen randomly and over time, our views change and hence our outlook in life and the categories that we so painstakingly created no longer hold. In my case, it is far better to just photograph what I like and the compose. That is much more about the emotional value of the image that I am creating.
Staging street art is fine, but street photography being staged is fraud. A street portrait which is obviously so, or photographing a group of people doing their bit without coaching is still street photography. There are times when the people notice the camera, and play up to it, but it usually come through in the image taken, and you will see the interaction where the photographer was part of the experience. Of course, never being noticed, and having people more natural in the frame is the goal. It is the staged events pretending to be street photography, and not portraits or art which I find to be less than authentic. With documentary work, it can be what the photographer leaves out which becomes the politics. - Loren Schwiderski street photography
A cliché that needs to be corrected. Portraits or street. Putting both under one name is just lazy. And I don't care about the photographer who started it. Logic needs to correct it. If it needs to be focused on humans, it's street portraits. If it's focused on the street/environment/surroundings it's street photography.
@ForsgardPeter when I'm searching for street photography, I'm expecting to see something new that is worth visiting. Destructive humans I can see just outside my door. That's why it needs to be corrected to what the photography really is. Like you sometimes shows Finland, that gives photographers motivation to visit your country/town 😊
My rule of thumb is, if you'd print, frame, and mount an image the wall, then it's artistic. If not, it's documentary photography, but both are great shooting formats
These controversies are more fun than arguing about gear! Please keep at it.
Maybe before you click the shutter is the time when knowing the difference between artistic and documentary street photography is most important.
Intention one way or the other dictates the actual choices you make regarding settings, framing, timing &etc. It’s ok to edit afterward if doing so will further sculpt the image toward your initial intention.
Once you present the image for someone to see, how they interpret it is out of your hands.
But we should pay attention to how others interpret the image. We can use that feedback to help guide the choices we make before clicking the shutter next time. Or not. Another choice!
What’s important is deciding whether our goal is to capture an image that portrays the facts of the scene as we are seeing it or those feelings the scene conjures within us. Before the shutter actuates.
Thanks for sharing.
I'm biased towards documentary but I would not exclude artistic approach either. It all depends on the situation in hand. So for me there is no better or worse. Interesting topic though. Thanks for sharing.
First, I like the ski cap with the "SUBSCRIBE" logo - LOL 😀. My "street photography" is neither when I'm making the image. When I'm post processing if I think the image stands on it's own then it might be documentary but if I do edits that "change" the image e.g remove an element, than it's more artistic. To me the distinction is immaterial. Whatever I do in post processing is because I want the photo to reflect what I like, if others like it fine, if not that's fine too.
Thanks, yes it is a bit LOL, the ski hat I mean...
Yeah I agree. They both have their purpose. I think each moment/scene we encounter has its reason for being on or the other (or both). I tend to lean on the artistic side, since I don’t live in a bustling city like New York where you can literally just make photos of people all day. I have to be a lot more artistic and creative, sometimes making something seemingly “normal” or “boring”, become something artistic
Nice! Thanks for making this point about how geography, mobility & circumstances help determine which avenues of creativity we take.
You put it so well. I’m right there with you. Due to where I’m at “artistic” vistas are wider, more plentiful and interesting to explore.
Landscape photography? I shoot distant mountains, sweeping foregrounds, stunning shapes & deep shadows with close up & macro lenses. 😂
For some time I worked on discovering what "street photography." As best I could see is that it's pretty much documentary in that it documents things that happened. And it mostly includes people and/or domesticated animals. A street portrait isn't street photography, but my photograph of you making a street portrait probably is.
This doesn't preclude the use of interesting elements such as reflections, framing (for example a gap between trees).
I generally avoid that distinction and describe that part of my work as "urban photography." People welcome, but not required.
I typically remove nothing except by cropping, I might use some local or targetted adjustments to reduce the impact of unwanted elements.
I often hide stuff, whether with camera movement, focus effects or other devices. The intent is artistic, but arguably documentary. Even when I have shot a timelapse and combined selected frames to describe the passage of time. I have "The Conversation" where two men stood in front of my camera and discussed some business matter (I think, I wasn't listening) over a few minutes. The men are blurry (1 second exposures), the background is sharp and there are mysterious blurs as people walked through the shot. It's documentary - it happened - and it's accepted as art.
Of course Peter, almost any documentary image you take has an artistic element, it's 'in you'. For me, having a camera at work is not really feasible but there's an iPhone in my pocket and I take a documentary shot from time to time and sometimes I just see an image. I have a camera as a means of self expression, I can do so much more with it. For sure I do more street photography than any other genre and for me I am always looking for that interesting image that is generally a bit of both. Thumbs up for these kinds of discussions, so much better than gear-head stuff.
Thanks.
Nice classification. Documentary? Artistic? Both give a view of life. In such debate, i usually give my option with one word : "party"
"party" & "down" = ?
another amazing video. When I do street here in Thailand is more towards documentary.
And what about arguing about "3" being the right figure to do street photography ? 🤣
I like the way your argument has shifted over the last 2/3 years.
And thank you for bringing back the desire and the artistic at the heart of the images. 😍
Edit: please don't worry about "old images", rest and recover as best you can.
Not sure if 3 is right. However we tend to like odd numberd amount of elements in an image. 3-5-7...
@@ForsgardPeter I was referring to the campaign (artistic, documentary or advertising? hmm) of a company that you were close to until recently 😉
Always a slightly nuanced subject area I think. Documentary is what I do in so far as, it is what I set out to do. That doesn't have to exclude making an artistic shot if such an opportunity happens to arise. I would argue that the artistic shot is more likely to involve an abstraction of some kind within a scene and the result of this may not give much away with respect to place or time. The viewer may have no idea where it was taken for example, but it isolates elements of interest to creative effect. These days, I don't usually spend a whole lot of time framing up shots, you kind of see the main chance, the overall scene, lighting, goings on etc. that you want to capture and shoot from the hip to some extent. Art can still happen, but usually not realised until downloading the pictures afterwards. Sometimes you just get tin bum lucky
Thanks for sharing.
I doupt whether there is any real "Documentary Style" in Photography. Any Situation out there in the street is such a complex kind of meeting between arcitecture, people, maybe cars, animals, wheather, light, you name it yourselve. So there are always many stories to tell in any moment. In choosing one or two of them, the photographer can't help, becoming an "artistic" storyteller, because if he trys to show everything, what is going on in some kind of "Documetary Style", he will tell no story at all.
To me Photography is always a personal style of melting down reality to the story of my interest, whatever style of showing this story I might choose. It remains subjective and asks for resonance in the viewers mind.
it should be documentary, for art it's token, it would turn into run of the mill, documentary would yield in capturing art in subject matter and for editing, shooting for art would yield numerous clichés behind the editing
I think the answer to the basic question is "yes".
I agree, it is a simple answer.
I really like your artistic photos
Thank you.
We humans are a funny lot. We try to make sense of the world by creating a sense of order and attempting to pigeon-hole everything. In life, events happen randomly and over time, our views change and hence our outlook in life and the categories that we so painstakingly created no longer hold. In my case, it is far better to just photograph what I like and the compose. That is much more about the emotional value of the image that I am creating.
Our brains work that way. It tries to make sense and chategorize things for clarity and sense.
I think your documentary shot of the holocaust memory is a good example of an image that is both documentary and artistic.
Staging street art is fine, but street photography being staged is fraud. A street portrait which is obviously so, or photographing a group of people doing their bit without coaching is still street photography. There are times when the people notice the camera, and play up to it, but it usually come through in the image taken, and you will see the interaction where the photographer was part of the experience. Of course, never being noticed, and having people more natural in the frame is the goal. It is the staged events pretending to be street photography, and not portraits or art which I find to be less than authentic. With documentary work, it can be what the photographer leaves out which becomes the politics.
- Loren Schwiderski street photography
Well said, thanks for sharing.
I want your hat. 😀
:D
@@ForsgardPeter Maybe it could be a giveaway for a contest or something? Or let people know where to find one.
A cliché that needs to be corrected. Portraits or street. Putting both under one name is just lazy. And I don't care about the photographer who started it. Logic needs to correct it.
If it needs to be focused on humans, it's street portraits. If it's focused on the street/environment/surroundings it's street photography.
I think street portraits are a sub-niche of street photography. Does it matter if iot is not... no.
@ForsgardPeter when I'm searching for street photography, I'm expecting to see something new that is worth visiting. Destructive humans I can see just outside my door. That's why it needs to be corrected to what the photography really is. Like you sometimes shows Finland, that gives photographers motivation to visit your country/town 😊