There seems to be a certain style of in your face street photography that is in vogue today. Goes along with the enormous exhibition size prints that are often made to hide mediocre subject matter. Then there is the view that you have to use a certain type of camera to make a certain type of picture, or for instance that medium format or larger must be used for urban landscape (someone in the photo-art establishment told me that). Or worse yet, that you need for example to be making street photographs in a certain way for them to be interesting. Read lenses shot wide open to produce “incredible” out of focus bokeh. Of course this is all rubbish!

If you are using film in today’s world you have already made a conscious decision to buck the digital wave, but that’s just the start. To make photographs that are truly meaningful they must be yours regardless of what others think.  It doesn’t matter what is in or what you use. What matters is that it be good! And what you produce is likely to be better if it is something you want to make, in a way you want to make it!

Think about it. What is more of a waste of time than a technically perfect rendering of a boring subject?  Well maybe a sloppy rendering of a boring subject.  I am reminded of the exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art I recently wrote about … Strand, Weston, Stieglitz, Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, and Arnold Newman.  They made what was meaningful to them, in their own way.  They were true photographers and artists.  Their work has stood the test of time and will continue to do so.  Yours can too.