Documetary and Street Links

Photographers:
Charles Harbutt - Travelog, Progresso
Alex Webb Magnum - the Istanbul essay is really good. find it in the major features link.
- Interview
Sebastiao Salgado

Matt Stuart - Pure street. This is the sort of stuff I want to do...
- some personal comments on his photos - http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2008/01/matt-stuart-what-was-he-thinking.html

Joel Meyerowitz on the street - Video - describes his way of working. cool to see him in action.
- also has a gallery on the iN-PUBLIC site. see below.

- Quote from 2point8 interview...
"I use pictures as a kind of building block of a visual language, so that it's not the individual picture that's the so-called "master work" the way painting created master works. These pictures are all little gestural elements that don't necessarily add-up on their own to anything profound, but as a run of pictures, you might be able to sustain some thoughts and ideas. And I guess that's what I always, since I understood Robert Frank's "The Americans", from the first few times looking at it, I suddenly understood, 'oh, they don't have to be great photographs, they have to be interesting and interlocking in a way that you could fuse them in runs of seven or ten pictures, to be stating a sort of collective of ideas into one thing that will carry the reader along."

Henri Cartier Bresson Interview Video with Charlie Rose
The Decisive Moment - HCB. Entire book scanned and online. Great intro by HCB.
Cary Conover - Visual Diaries -
Alessandra Sanguinetti -
James Nachtwey - War Photographer. The DVD is awesome
Tony Marciante - Flickr (timewitness)
David Alan Harvey - personal blog (called road trip). Magnum photog.
Simon Norfolk - Landscapist with a focus on human impact, in particular war. Has though a lot about his work and has some very interesting writing on his website to accompany the images.


David Solomon - Happenstance - Brazil
Paul Russell - Beside the Sea
Ben Anderson
Dog Days, Bogota -Alec Soth
Phillip Toledano
Ben Roberts

Magnum
Approach... excerpts from Magnum stories


La Pura Vida Gallery
Heading East Blog - Raul Gutierrez
Seconds to Real - street photography collection

Discussion:
Hardcore Street Photography group - Flickr. Gallery and Discussion.
- Limitation of street photography - discussion regarding random street snaps vs directed prolonged projects.
- Similar discussion to the above : getting deeper than street photos as pretty pictures.
- Quotes -
- Killer Street Sets

2point8 - awesome street photog blog.
- Ways of Working
- The Phyla of Street Photography.
- Resources page - some nice links here
- Discussions

iN-PUBLIC - great gallery.
- Masters Galleries and Bios - Richard Kavlar, Joel Meyerowitz and Bryan Campbell
- What is Street Photography??



Some video links I want to watch

Lung S Liu

gypsy kids #6, originally uploaded by Lung S. Liu.

This guy is very good. Fantastic portraits and street photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lungsliu/
http://www.lungliu.com/info.html

Selecting a subject

I thought I had posted this article before.... but I can't find it so here it is again..

It is an extract from the book: "On being a photographer". One of my all time favourite books on photography.

Article is titled: Selecting a Subject.
http://enhanced.lenswork.com/obpenhanced.pdf

I've read this several times. I'm revisiting it now as a Flickr discussion has got me thinking about my photography and what I am actually trying to do with it.

With the flood of photography on the net there has been a real jostling for attention and thumbnail photography. We see an overload of cliched images - saturated long exposure sunsets, flower macros, HDR, photoshop manipulations - all stuff I've done myself, but am getting quite bored of it all.

In this culture of vacuous prettiness, the camera can become a tech toy rather than a photographic tool. There can be too much emphasis on showing off technical skill and camera tricks.

The goal of photography should not be produce nice photos. The camera should be used to transmit an idea or feeling that the photographer is passionate about.

Good photography arises when one can capture something that has personal significance and convey that meaning to others in an asthetically pleasing image. The camera is the chosen tool used by the photographer to understand the world and share that understanding with others.

So one needs to overcome the fascination with the camera and themselves and look to the world for inspiration. When they are passionate about something, they can create good photographs. That's what I need to do. I have several projects in mind...

I've been going on about this for quite a while. Really gotta get a change of approach going.

--------------------------------------
Update 27/11/07
- found the link to the entire book "On Being a Photographer".

Zombie Lizard

Found this guy in my shed. He made the perfect subject for a still life light painting.

Handheld panoramas still work well

I usually use a tripod with RRS panning clamp and rail to create panoramas that stitch perfectly.

I didn't bother with this approach when I was travelling through Europe and was surprised how well my panoramas came together. PTGui is amazing software.