Words in Street Photos
I somewhat reluctantly post my street photos. I have told the story of my children staging an intervention, in a manner of speaking, years ago because I was taking photos that no one ever saw. They pushed me toward Instagram. I now have 700 posts there, so I guess I am not too reluctant.
There is one Facebook group, Street Photography Challenge, that I will post in every chance I get. Each week there is the Classic Challenge followed by the Mini Challenge. It is fun to participate in the challenges. It is even more fun to judge one, which I do a couple of times a year. This week, the theme of the Classic Challenge is #words. Street photos that have text in them can be submitted for the competition.
Oh, that is fun. I happen to like text in street photos. I find it visually pleasing. Text can also be a sneaky way to caption the photo. I call that phenomenon “in-photo captions”. Sometimes I have no photos that match Street Photography Challenge theme, but I thought to myself, in this challenge surely I will be able to submit the maximum number of photos, which is two color and two b&w.
This is one of the color photos that I submitted for the Street Photography Challenge, #words.
Imagine my surprise when I briefly perused the 3280 photos on my iPad and could not find a single instance of text in an image. Looking at thumbnail size pictures does not lend itself to finding text, but here is the bottom line, I don’t take a lot of photos that include text. I suspect I know why.
This is the second submission. It is a photo that I particularly like.
I read a lot of street photography blogs. Simon King, who writes for Peta Pixel, and Spyros Papaspyrospoulis, who writes for Street Hunters, tend to influence me the most. Both of them have written about the issue of using words in street photos. Neither allows company logos in their photos. Now, I think that means clothing. But maybe it means no pictures of a person drinking from a Coke can, or I suppose, no use of an advertising sign as a backdrop. Their point is that they are absolutely not going to give free advertising through their pictures. I understand the sentiment and support the concept, but if get a good photo with a logo in it, I definitely am going to use it! My advertising reach is not that great.
Simon King takes the issue of words in a photo a step farther in his blog, What I Avoid in Street Photography and How. The first thing he avoids is “writing” in his street photos. He very correctly observes that the viewer will go to the writing first. He also feels there is a potential for writing to date the photo. I think at some level he influenced me, at the very least, to not seek out words in my photos.
It might be a little awkward to be his date.
When I went into Nashville this week, I was specifically interested in taking pictures that include words. What I found was that the best opportunity was in shirts that had words printed on them. It is curious what people want to say to the world via messages on their clothing. The first picture I took made me wonder if someone else’s choice of message was appropriate to post.
These are words that I am not so comfortable with for many reasons. As a Navy dependent, I was taught to be respectful of the President and other leaders. I guess those are days gone by. So I ask you, is this too much to post?
That issue of appropriateness of using certain words in a photo arose again later in the day. The honky-tonk, The Valentine, displays merchandise for sale in its window. They have a shirt, I think it is a shirt, that says, “Tight Jeans, Loose Morals”. Funny, right? Now this is pretty easy pickings to get a juxtaposition with an attractive young woman, or less easy, a young man, wearing tight jeans. I got such a picture. It might have been the best picture of the day. The young woman seemed to be laughing at the joke. In the end, though, I cannot bring myself to post it. What if she was my daughter? To pair the implication of those words with a stranger who just happened to be passing by does not seem fair or appropriate.
Street photography has many complex issues that have to be sorted through. That is part of the charm for me.