Street Gallery Daily Deviation Guidelines

Oct 12, 20175 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Oct 12, 2017

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Hello street shooters! I will be taking over as Street Gallery CV, which means one of my responsibilities will be selecting Daily Deviations!

I hope to get lots of suggestions for DD's from you all. And to help with that I want to go over the definition of street photography as well as some guidelines.

What is Street Photography?

Let's go with the DeviantArt definition first: "Street Photography is about people in context, in candid, unposed, and unstaged situations in public places, with no or minimum post-processing."

And let's back that up with Wikipedia's definition: "Street photography ... features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places."

This is a great start but let's unpack that a bit. First and foremost street photograph is "unposed," "unstaged," and "unmediated." No posing models here!

Secondly, it features "encounters" and "random incidents." What this means is that something has to be happening in the photo—a story must unfold. Photos of empty streets, no matter how beautiful, are not Street Photography with a capital S and capital P.

Finally, street photos are shot public places—no shots from your mom's living room please!

That unpacks the textbook definition, but let me go a step further and explain what I look for in good street photographs

1. Candidness

The photo unveils a truth about a situation or person or place. There is an honesty to the photo—going a bit deeper than simply being unstaged. Photos of people standing around, waiting, looking at their phones, might lack candidness.

2. Mundanity

The photo shows nothing spectacular in and of itself. It is unremarkable in the sense that anyone could have come across this moment on the street. What brings it to life is the act of photography itself. This means that things like street festivals, buskers, and other public events generally do not generally make street photographs. It's not always the case, but if the moment is remarkable without being photographed, then photo might belong in reportage or documentary and might not be a street photograph.

3. Context

The photo should not be a mere portrait but should provide some context that ties the subject into its surroundings. The whole photo should be telling the story, not only the subjects. There is nothing wrong with bokeh, but it needs to add the story rather than just hide the background.

4. Transient Nature

Street photos capture scenes that are fleeting, momentary, short-lived. This is the famed "decisive moment"—if you can come back tomorrow and capture the same scene exactly, then it might not be a street photo.

Please bear in mind that the above are my opinions and they are what I consider when judging a street photo as good or great or out of this world. If your suggestion does not meet some of these concepts but you feel it's a good photo anyway, by all means, please suggest it! My only goal is to help people understand what street photography means and to provide a starting point that can help you identify great street photographs!

General DD Suggestion Guidelines

• To suggest a daily deviation, please send me a note titled "Daily Deviation Suggestion" or something along those lines. Do not comment on my front page, on this journal, or anywhere else.

• Please include a thumbnail of your suggestion, and preferably a reason why you feel it deserves a Daily Deviation. If you have multiple suggestions, feel free to include them all in 1 single note, so long as it's organized and clear. Also, if you'd like to remain anonymous please let me know.

• Before suggesting a Daily Deviation please check to see that the deviant has not received a DD in the past 6 months. To do so, simply go on the deviant's profile and add /dds at the end of their url (ex: burningmonk.deviantart.com/dds). I cannot feature someone who has received a DD in the past 6 months, so please check this carefully.

• As most CV's, I will not feature a member who has been inactive for over 4 weeks. This is a general rule, as we want to feature active members of the community.