Looking beyond photography competitions to find greater fulfillment in your work.

Its almost a template newcomers to photography follow. You give it a shot (photography) and become smitten. Who wouldn’t? You shoot voraciously and you love your pictures, you think they’re great. Of course you do; your friends and family praised your posts on the social networks. You think your pictures deserve greater recognition and they’re good enough to haul in a prize at a competition so you take a shot (the competition). Nothing happens and you wonder why your pictures weren’t deemed good enough to even receive a nod.

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Our planet was ripe for it. Our modern society was designed around the concept of cramming as many people into as small a space as is tolerable to maximize asset utilization and earnings. Asset here refers to anything designed to accommodate humans and earn revenues from accommodation. Think concert arenas, commercial airplanes, apartment buildings, buses and businesses in all their different forms.

The aggressive monetization of space has been both clever and successful. First, there’s the simple linear relationship between space and cash. Think about commercial flights; you can get chucked in the shoulder to shoulder, non-distinct, general population, economy…

What do you enjoy photographing most? In all forms, there are more cameras than humans on the planet and billions of photos are taken, uploaded and shared each day. In myriad ways we consume pictures almost by the pound every second; they’re in the news, on our social media feeds, product packaging, magazines, billboards, books, city walls and advertising/promotional material. But steeped and sinking in such a sea of imagery, have we ever interrogated ourselves on the types of pictures we enjoy viewing?

I recently undertook a personal project digitizing a collection of old family photographs which had already spent…

Going out and visually recording the world as honestly as you can and showing my observations to others: that’s what I wanted to do” — David Hurn

There you have it; in a language so simplistic and direct it prompts neither doubt nor question. And that is how you do street photography.

Hurn’s words distill the practice of street photography into three elemental actions: going out, recording and sharing. Though he could have left it as simple as this, he added depth to his definition with the descriptors which bracketed each action.

His recording for instance was first visual. He…

Cameras are everywhere. There’s one staring me in the face right now as I type. Nothing that two layers of dark electrical tape can’t fix though.

Yes, cameras are everywhere and we are addicted to them. It’s not so much that we’re addicted to cameras as we are to what they give us; pictures, mostly of ourselves. Pictures of our kids and of our cool exotic vacations. Pictures to share and pictures to keep. So many pictures we now purchase storage and stash them in clouds, an approach not very different from that taken by some shopaholic societies.

I myself…

In 1993 South African photographer Kevin Carter took one of the world’s most famous images. Even without seeing it I’m fairly certain you know it. It was an image of an emaciated Sudanese toddler collapsed and struggling to make her way to a feeding center while a vulture stalked nearby.

The imagery was both shocking and compelling. Published in The New York Times (Friday March 26, 1993), The Mail and The Guardian (Johannesburg), it stirred strong reactions in its day and ultimately became the billboard for all things related to famine, poverty and despair on the African continent.

It won…

There’s an expression I receive in response to telling people I do street photography. Their heads nod and while they try to say with their faces, “oh, I see”, what their expressions really betray is “eh, what?”.

I’m used to the involuntary expressions of bewilderment. When I tell someone I’m a photographer, they most naturally assume I shoot weddings. I don’t blame them. Outside of the more informed photography circles the genre of street photography doesn’t get much attention or appreciation. I can almost sense that people are sometimes spooked by someone who goes around taking pictures of absolute strangers…

Trying to stay true to my own advice to take fewer pictures, and to shoot film (sometimes), I hauled my $40 Minolta X370 with me on a recent trip to Paris. Although I also had a digital camera with me, the 35mm film-fueled Minolta was my primary tote while roaming the city.

I couldn’t put my finger on the reason but I felt as though Paris deserved to be captured in film. Digital seemed too modern, clean and perfect.

“I was impressed with the Portra 400’s ability to capture detail in both bright and shadow areas of the midday scenes…”

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