This is about street photography and our street photography gallery here on dA.

I’m no longer the most web savvy fella out there, so this isn’t going to be the prettiest news article you’ve seen but that’s fine because this is about street photography. It’s not about skinning or any of the other technical digital art forms here that blow my mind because I don’t understand them very well, and this this isn't the prettiest news article.

But I do understand street photography.

What I have seen lately is that the mass majority of new photographers here, and even some older photographers who may not follow the genre, have a broad misunderstanding of what street photography is. Last night I spent about 10 minutes going through the street gallery's most recent deviations and realized i could probably spend 10 years reporting the misplaced deviations.

So I’m going to attempt to help explain.

Street photography is real.

It’s about people, about the human element, and it’s downright honest.
If you want a dA definition it’s actually very accurate.

“Street photography featuring people in candid situations in public places.”

Wikipedia’s is good too, and a bit better structured for you well spoken types.

“Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions, and other settings.”

Don’t take a picture of skyscrapers in a city and tell me it’s a street shot because there’s a street in it. Don’t take a picture of a street sign and tell me it’s a street shot because the word “street” is in the phrase “street sign.” Don’t take a picture of your favorite animal sitting on the street outside your house and call it a street shot. Don’t shoot architecture, or skylines, or wide angle cityscapes and call it street because there’s people like shapes the size of ants in your photo.

Don't give me your contrived snap shots of your buddies walking down the street to the next local show. Don't give me the posed, staged, I crawled down on the ground to take a perfect close up of stuff on the ground.

Let’s see honesty, emotion, irony, something.

Give me something real.

In photojournalism school I was told that they wouldn’t accept any photos without people in them. In the real world you can pull off shots without people in them and get them published, but the truth stays “shots with people in them are better,” for a thousand reasons detailed in lectures that I won’t bother to bore you with here.

The same applies to street.

Show me people.



But just because street photography is "real" and "candid" and all these other glorious adjectives doesn't mean that it can't be down right beautiful either.



Or emotional.




Or thought provoking



Or Ironic (maybe even humorous for those who aren't cynics)



Or just damn sexy




And also...quiet...



And please don't tell me that all these deviations have a zillion favorites and "omg how can you write news about good art!" They're popular because they're good, because they're real, and they're street, and it's the stuff done right.

So lets remember what this is about.

People.

Let's keep the street category how it should be.

In the mean time I'm going to start collecting up street shots from people who are submitting things to street recently...that are actually street shots. Stuff like this:



If anyone has any suggestions shoot them my way as I'd really like to feature the photographers who are doing it right.

In the mean time get out on the streets and take those shots. I look forward to seeing them.

~ R