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See also street photography, where just asking people if it's ok to take their photo makes life nicer and easier. Photographers are mostly allowed to take phot

by DanBC 7y ago

See also street photography, where just asking people if it's ok to take their photo makes life nicer and easier. Photographers are mostly allowed to take photos of people in the street, but some of them can be pretty obnoxious about it.

digikazi 7y ago
Bruce Gilden springs to mind when you mention "obnoxious" photographers. His technique is to just shove a camera in somebody's face and take the shot. Often there's a flash involved too. Watching a YouTube video of him doing his thing on the streets of NY was both quite horrifying and very, very cringey. I'm genuinely surprised nobody hit him yet.
- zerkten 7y ago
  I wasn't familiar with Bruce Gilden, but the first YouTube video I watched was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM. My take is that this is a very different kind of "obnoxious" than what was described in the original article. Most people attempting to imitate him would be that bad kind of obnoxious. I haven't done much research, but Bruce Gilden strikes me someone who is a pioneer of (NYC) street photography. He has been doing it for a long time and doesn't seem like a photo hipster. Maybe he was considered one when he started out. The fact he wears photography attire is probably disarming in a way. If it was someone trying to blend in then it might be different. The photos from the video are not derpy photos as my wife likes to describe my portraits of hers so he is trying to show an interesting side of life. I'm sure a lot of pictures don't meet his standards. Within photo groups in my city, I see a lot of people into street photography because it's the cool aesthetic that matches with their urban lifestyle. It's cool to be into photography, so they got a digital rangefinder and jumped into it without thinking about the art or technique. They form a cargo cult, but often they get broken from it upon discovery that there is more to photography that they are missing. The obnoxious instragrammers are not likely to have the same outcome.
checktheorder 7y ago
I did a lot of street photography, when I lived and worked in the downtown core of a major city. I still do whenever I can, making road trips to a nearby major city from my home in a minor one. I think it's the most difficult photographic genre to do well. On the one hand, a good street photographer is trying to document peoples' natural public lives - observing, but not interfering. On the other hand, it's rather invasive to single out a living subject in a photograph without their permission, even if the subject is in clear view in public. Wildlife photographers don't need the animals' permission. Trees and mountains don't care about the people making landscapes. Buildings don't care about people capturing architecture. People sitting for a professional studio portrait sign model releases up front. Journalists generally only care about not getting in emergency services' way. But us street folk? We're in that odd zone where we need our subjects to both give permission (either implicitly or explicitly) and act natural. Many can't manage that balance. They either start doing urban architecture with silhouetted people and pretend that it's street (which I am frequently guilty of), or they go full-scale Bruce-Asshole-Gilden and rampage their way into people's faces.

by DanBC 7y ago

digikazi 7y ago

Bruce Gilden springs to mind when you mention "obnoxious" photographers. His technique is to just shove a camera in somebody's face and take the shot. Often there's a flash involved too. Watching a YouTube video of him doing his thing on the streets of NY was both quite horrifying and very, very cringey. I'm genuinely surprised nobody hit him yet.

zerkten 7y ago
I wasn't familiar with Bruce Gilden, but the first YouTube video I watched was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM. My take is that this is a very different kind of "obnoxious" than what was described in the original article. Most people attempting to imitate him would be that bad kind of obnoxious. I haven't done much research, but Bruce Gilden strikes me someone who is a pioneer of (NYC) street photography. He has been doing it for a long time and doesn't seem like a photo hipster. Maybe he was considered one when he started out. The fact he wears photography attire is probably disarming in a way. If it was someone trying to blend in then it might be different. The photos from the video are not derpy photos as my wife likes to describe my portraits of hers so he is trying to show an interesting side of life. I'm sure a lot of pictures don't meet his standards. Within photo groups in my city, I see a lot of people into street photography because it's the cool aesthetic that matches with their urban lifestyle. It's cool to be into photography, so they got a digital rangefinder and jumped into it without thinking about the art or technique. They form a cargo cult, but often they get broken from it upon discovery that there is more to photography that they are missing. The obnoxious instragrammers are not likely to have the same outcome.

checktheorder 7y ago

I did a lot of street photography, when I lived and worked in the downtown core of a major city. I still do whenever I can, making road trips to a nearby major city from my home in a minor one. I think it's the most difficult photographic genre to do well. On the one hand, a good street photographer is trying to document peoples' natural public lives - observing, but not interfering. On the other hand, it's rather invasive to single out a living subject in a photograph without their permission, even if the subject is in clear view in public. Wildlife photographers don't need the animals' permission. Trees and mountains don't care about the people making landscapes. Buildings don't care about people capturing architecture. People sitting for a professional studio portrait sign model releases up front. Journalists generally only care about not getting in emergency services' way. But us street folk? We're in that odd zone where we need our subjects to both give permission (either implicitly or explicitly) and act natural. Many can't manage that balance. They either start doing urban architecture with silhouetted people and pretend that it's street (which I am frequently guilty of), or they go full-scale Bruce-Asshole-Gilden and rampage their way into people's faces.