I was standing at the corner of 34th St. and 7th Ave in Manhattan. I was on the Macys corner, where the mid-afternoon light can be awesome. I looked around for people to photograph but instead, I noticed there were half a dozen guys with cameras, waiting to pounce. Street photographers. I approached a couple of them and got the same response: "we’re here every day. There’s always action at this corner."
34th Street and 7th Ave, Manhattan: It used to be one of my favorite corners for street photography, but now it's too crowded...with street photographers!
I was feeling possessive of that piece of valuable Manhattan real estate. After all, I've stopped at that corner to take pictures on almost every visit I've made to the New York since 1976. I felt like the grumpy old man wanting to yell, "hey you rotten kids, get offa my lawn!" But it isn't my lawn, so I did't. Instead, after determining that these fellows were trying to be street photographers, I ducked into the Macy's vestibule and casually observed them through the windows.
I was not impressed. I only saw a couple of them actually take a picture or two. One of them was shooting from the hip but apparently using a flip-up screen to compose. Another waited until someone passed, then photographed their back. Others watched situations develop and dissipate, but didn't take a picture. Not even from the hip. How could I tell? Their cameras were slung on their shoulders and their hands were in their pickets!
Construction along the southwest corner has created a "squish point" where close photos of people are possible.
It looked like they'd all been watching the same YouTube videos of so-so street shooters and following their advice. Rather than actually watching the action and letting the situation determine the photograph, every one of them seemed to be waiting for something to happen that looked like a street photo they must have seen online. In other words, they were being held back by their preconception of what a street photo should look like and how a street photographer on YouTube should behave.
After watching this pack of street photographer wannabes for a little while, I decided I needed to find another spot to do my street photography and get away from the camera-toting crowd. Something I learned from my photojournalism class with J. Ross Baughmann was: If you see photographers heading in one direction, head the other way because that way you’ll get the photos they miss. So I found another location, and while it's no 34th and 7th, it's pretty good. No, I'm not saying where. I don't want to attract others.
The late-afternoon light at 34th and 7th is one of its attractions for photographers.A Rennassance of Street Photography Comes at a Cost: Mediocrity.
I’ve lived through the death of Street Photography as declared by “critics” on multiple occasions starting in the early 1980s. The Internet has brought about a level of popularity for street photography that we’ve never seen before. It’s easy to post street photos on Facebook groups, in blogs (ahem), and on free or low-cost web sites.
The downside of the current popularity of street photography is that there are a lot of bad practices and mediocrity, some of it promoted by those same FB groups (some of which I'm a member of) as well as some YouTubers. Most YouTubers doing street photography are quite good but the bad ones seem to get a lot of views. I suspect the guys I came across hanging out on 34th and 7th were avid viewers of the lesser of the many YouTube videos.
Thinking out loud: Should I do some posts that review/react to specific videos by street photographers? Would that be helpful? Let me know.
And to the guys who might be hanging out at 34th and 7th and would be interested in some guidance from one of Garry Winogrand's students, please reach out to me. I'd be happy to help you improve your approach.
My new spot: Can you figure out where this is?
If you know NYC, this shouldn't be too difficult to guess.
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