The Walk-by Theme in Street Photography
Photo by Judee Hollander. Used with permission. You can see Judee’s Facebook gallery at Judee Hollander and her Instagram gallery at @judeejudeejudee.
This photo was submitted for critique last Monday, May 31, in our Inspired Street Photography group. There were wider differences than even usual in the critique responses. Out of this comes an opportunity for me to pontificate on the walk-by theme and explore my idea of what is good enough in walk-by street photography. I love pontification and exploration.
For me, when the interest in a street photo is largely one or more persons walking, I call it a walk-by. It is a basic building block for learning street photography. Really, it is this simple. You go find an interesting place and wait for an interesting person to walk or run through. You would think walk-bys would be inherently interesting. That is not always the case.
Part of the property of not being interesting, is just the sheer volume of walk-by photos being taken and posted. To really engage me in a walk-by, there has to be something phenomenal about the photo. Which is not to say that I cannot enjoy a whole range of walk-bys. I do. Every day. What I have been pondering is there a quality bar that a walk-by has to get over for me to even enjoy such a commonly taken picture? There is.
In street photography circles we like to brag about how we are not tethered by compositional or even technical issues. There is some truth to that. But it is like anything else, if you give someone an inch, they are apt to take a mile. As a group, in the walk-by themed street photos, I pretty much require a good technical photo and some points of good composition. Judee’s photo met both of my requirements there.
Technical Quality
To explain my requirements for a walk-by I am going to use some of my critique comments to Judee, with some edits to help the transition to a blog.
This meets and exceeds all of my technical requirements. I like high key, where tones in the image tend to mainly be in the highlights or white range, but if you have a blown out area of a picture, it is highly likely it will not meet my personal quality standards. I am currently grieving over exactly that problem in one of my pictures. I am less picky about losing detail in the shadows, but that would have had consequence here if it had occurred in that large dark window space. You have not blown out lights. You have a good amount of detail in the shadows; enough, in fact, to give me a sense of depth. Over all, I find this photo to be well exposed.
What I can really be prickly about when evaluating the technical quality of an image is how well you both focused and left unfocused aspects of the image. I am satisfied here. The focus is good enough that I can see your hero has a tattoo, for example. I know from the vagaries of how algorithms size files in FB, the focus is quite likely even sharper in the real life picture. I can think of no reason to use shallow depth of field here.
Design - Compositional Elements
Color
Your color palette is relatively limited. Too many colors or colors that do not work together can absolutely be a composition killer for me. Not a problem here. Actually, you have a nice red color match going with the building, the text in the signs, the candles on the tables, her red shirt, and the little surprise, the red on the man’s ankle. That is a fair amount of red but is is in the acceptable range and not blown out as reds can be. The second color match is the gold of her headband and the frame of the picture in the sign.
Repetition
I do love finding repetitions. Two people, two tables, two candles. The Gestalt perception parts of my brain are lighting up.
Geometry
I have a thing for implied triangles. Three points of the triangle are from her head, to the top of the pole, to the front corner of the sidewalk sign.
Diagonals
Let’s talk about stride. The goal is to have a leg extended in the front. That creates a dynamic diagonal that gives energy to a walk-by. If you get that, your walk-by picture is elevated to sub-category of a walk-by that I call a stride picture. It would have been better if you had gotten that, but both of your heroes are on the same foot and essentially in the same walking position, so that is, at least, a good repetition.
Timing
You have good timing in where you caught you heroes. To understand that, all you have to do is think about how the composition would change if they were any other place in the frame.
Emotion
Here is the crux of disagreement among the various critiques. Are the subjects of this image compelling enough to suggest photographer intent or are they just a random snap of random people? First of all, I do not have a particular expectation for story in walk-by pictures. I wish I could post about a dozen walk-bys from well regarded photographers on ISP to illustrate what is often my internal response, “Love it, no story for me” or if there is not sufficient composition, just “no story for me”. I have to make walk-bys mostly about design for me, because otherwise it requires a level of image excellence that would significantly restrict admission of these kinds of posts on our site.
How do you get story out of a walk-by?
Juxtaposition
Sometimes story can arise because of the juxtaposition of the person with something interesting in the background. A particular example of this is the use street art as a background for walk-bys. I think using street art comes with an obligation for the photographer to significantly add story through their subject, because otherwise they are just appropriating someone else’s creative work.
If there was ever photographer intent, this is it. Can you tell what my intention was in taking this picture? In next week’s blog I will tell you the story of this photo.
Human Interaction
There can be human interaction. The walk-by background just sets a nice scene for this.
Interesting Character
There can be an interesting human who walks through. This is probably the most common story in a walk-by. The goal is to match the interest of the background to the interest of the person.
Getting back to Judee’s image, there is not a lot of story for some viewers. I actually do get some story because of the directed gaze of the woman. It was pointed out that she was “just” looking at a restaurant. Maybe it is because I owned Subway restaurants and certainly because of the pandemic, I no longer “just” look at restaurants. I feel the stress and panic that the owners must feel coming out of this year. If the restaurant is closed, I wonder if they will reopen. If they are open, I wonder if they are struggling to find enough people to work. We each make our own story. This is why meeting technical and compositional bars for this kind of composition is enough to get a walk-by in the door, so to speak, for me. The criteria for this kind of photo has to virtually lie outside of story for me. Perhaps I cannot see a story, but that does not mean that there is no story for you. Sometimes we all agree on story, all the better, because then you have an exceptional street photo. But exceptional, by definition, is not going to happen very often.