Street Photographer.

Sometimes when walking down the street, you will see people with cameras up to their eye taking a picture. Nothing too unusual about this since there are millions of cameras in millions of hands around the world.

It’s when you are standing looking at something that has caught your attention and you suddenly realize someone is taking a picture of you that it becomes a bit creepy. There is a very thin line between visually interesting and invasion of privacy. Technically if you are about town, and someone takes a picture of you, you are giving them rights to do so as you are in a public place. That doesn’t make it more comfortable, but it’s pretty much an unwritten rule.

I like to take pictures of people---often I don’t know them, and vice versa. However, if you are at a baseball game reaching for a foul ball or at Millennium Park in Chicago kicking water around, it’s not like you are just standing there---you are involved in something that is fun and bringing joy to people who would see the picture.

The other day I was talking with one of the photographers who is photographing football with us, and he said he takes pictures when he walks to work. I didn’t think much about it until he described how he did it. He keeps the camera next to his hip, points upward and snaps. His belief is he is capturing people in their everyday routine of walking to work or catching a train, cab, bus to their next destination. Kind of an interesting way to walk to work.

As he told the story it made me think of a recently discovered photographer, Vivian Maier, who took street shots for many years---she was a nanny in a Northern suburb of Chicago. She literally captured Chicago from the 1950s to early 1970s, for what it was back then---a big, growing town with grit and plenty of characters. Her photos are amazing ---she did it all without pointing the camera into the face of her subject. How was she discovered? Her negatives were found at a garage sale; she was the nanny of this family and has since passed away.

The unknowing buyer saw them and knew he had to have them; in the end he purchased nearly 100,000 negatives. It’s value…priceless, yet he paid a fraction of what they would be worth if you could purchase them. Makes you want to go to a garage sale doesn’t it?

The photo above was taken in Millennium Park; with clouds overhead, and bodies without faces, this photo is just a snippet of life in the big city. For me, pictures tell a story, or at least they should; if I am ever at a garage sale and see negatives in a box, you can be positive I am going to buy them.

Thanks for stopping by.