3.10.2014

Is it time to cede street photography and social photography to the cellphone world?

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©2014 Kirk Tuck

I'd vote "yes." Some wag yesterday left a comment that I dismissed out of hand. He (or she) mused that the images I'd posted were 'no better than what I could get from a phone' and in retrospect I have to agree. I had a new camera in my hand and I did what most other photographers do. I went out on a gray and featureless day and snapped images, behind which there was no real thought or emotional buy in, and I put them up on the web and waved my arms around and said "look, look, more images!" As though what I'd done was special and unique. Only it wasn't.

I had a public relations assignment yesterday that started at 10pm. The event wrapped around two in the morning and I was sitting in the studio until 4 am post processing and uploading to deliver before my client got up for breakfast. And this morning I woke from a banal dream in which line of people queued up outside a series of downtown buildings, endlessly. When I woke up I was overwhelmed with the thought that, for me, street photography is over. Just over.