I watched the latest upload from my friend Tim Huynh’s YouTube channel, he was interviewing the photographer Alan Schaller. I’m not particularly a fan of Alan’s work, though I do genuinely like his shots that aren’t claimed to be Street, undoubtedly a good photographer. Let’s just say his version of Street Photography isn’t my perception of it. It’s nuanced and of course we have to concede that perception is often questionable. Think of our speed when we drive, perceived as being optimal. Anyone faster is “a maniac” and slower “an idiot”. Evidently Alan is a good man and totally unrelated has a big following on Instagram. Many years ago there was a popular website for photographers called 500px. Similar to Instagram in a way - the more meaningless followers the more pointless likes game. A guy I sort of knew got fed up with the way below mediocre shots received five or six hundred likes due to the “game” appearing in feeds and the ‘most popular’ page. In protest he posted a photo of a toilet…it got 1,100 likes. I can say there were some extremely wise words spoken by Alan in Tim’s interview that resonated with me and I thought worth repeating here. I will be paraphrasing. Essentially that means using far more words than necessary to clarify the point already made. I’m really good at that! I should be fleshing out my view of Street Photography, sadly not much to show recently, just a couple amongst these. However, all the photos in this post were made in the last few of weeks. Some from a client shoot for a newly engaged couple, the others of an unavoidable Jane Austen theme. I went into Bath for some street photography and ended up getting drawn into some kind of a costume drama.
Firstly, those pesky smartphones and time were mentioned by Alan. Something I have thought about often. As he said, take a look at your screen time. For example: You spend two hours per day on your screen. We’re not including banking and things you have no other choice other than to get your phone out. Social Media and doom scrolling mostly covers it. We can read the news once a day by the way, nothing much changes and if it does you’ll catch up the next day - A celebrity dies as did 175,000 other humans that day and almost all of them (60 million per year) need to be celebrated, the halfwit Trump says something stupid, we haven’t got any money, the end is nigh, apocalypse, blah, blah. I’m not convinced it is news. Apply the same to Social Media, turn off your phone for a couple of weeks, believe me you won’t have missed much. Anyhow, 2 hours per day, that’s 730 hours per year or one whole month without taking sleep into account. Think what you could achieve in that time. No time to take photos? Yes you have. Imagine those books you’ve always wanted to read; A 400 page book takes roughly 13 hours to read. That’s 56 books per year out of your system. Think about that Jane Austen fans…
I don’t know her by the way. Brazilian I think she said. The country that is, come on, keep it clean! Next and another thing that caught my attention. Something that’s often crossed my mind and it is photography related. It transpires that Alan Schaller was once in the music business and said roughly this; You can learn the piano, be exceptional at it from the age of six. We agree, those musicians are hugely talented, imagine playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No2 perfectly in front of a couple of thousand people. It’s tremendous on every level if you’ve ever attempted playing an instrument and though you might show just one person what it is you’ve learned - “Hold on, I’ll start again, seriously it was brilliant earlier”. But, and here’s the thing, it’s just copying. They didn’t compose it. I was going to support that by saying that’s pretty much all covers by any artist. Not true, there are some brilliant covers. Anyhow, it’s almost forgery, accept that with music the fact is acknowledged that it’s a cover. because we can see the composer. I could say that I can play the guitar, full disclosure, barely after fifty years, but I’m only playing pieces that some genius created. I can draw if I’m copying something else already drawn. My dear dad used to say “just draw what you see” as he sketched a fruit bowl or an eye perfectly. He could paint as well. I couldn’t. Dad would play any instrument by ear; a piano, banjo, guitar. Give him a drum set or accordion and away he’d go. I can’t. Here’s where the camera comes in.
You can be the composer, the writer, the original. Express yourself. No need to copy or sell your soul. Photograph in your style, make and show photos you like not what others may like. Stop copying. Alex Webb was unique, let’s not see anymore forgeries. Put the phone down. Create and compose. Just take what you see, what you like.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails. Not that it matters they were made using a Leica M with a Summicron 28mm lens fitted. I used an Apple keyboard to type it all out.
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