Category: Photography

Street photography should be about capturing the human experience in an urban setting. Today, it seems things have somehow been reversed; the urban environment is now the subject of the photo, with the human serving as little more than a…

What John Free taught me about “straight” photography Not just “street photography” but “straight photography.”  John Free was a social documentary/street photographer who lived in Los Angeles. John and I spent time together photographing in Chicago. I first discovered John…

An overview of social documentary photography  Street photography, photojournalism, and social documentary photography have long been understood to be three related fields of photography. In this podcast, I give an overview of what social documentary photography is, and what separates…

Faceless and distant silhouettes, dark unknown phantoms standing in shafts of light, crowds of people with their backs turned, super-high-density colors with microscopic resolution – but no soul, no universal gesture, no human connection. That’s what we generally see being…

Social media street photographer: “Don’t do this, most street photographers consider photographing homeless people without their express permission to be disrespectful and intrusive.” Me: Isn’t the nature of street photography itself intrusive and disrespectful at some level? Should we develop…

Don’t buy more guitar gear. Spend the money on music lessons and practice more. Just like with photography, people get lost in GAS… I gave many photo workshops to rich white folks who had 15k worth of camera gear hanging…