Shutterbug
A lone figure with a camera at the edge of a wet city street at dusk, shop light on the pavement, traffic blurred

Street work is mostly failure, and nerve

You are in public. The thing you want lasts a quarter of a second. Most frames are wrong, and the only way to find the one that is not is to keep standing there while people look at you.

Nerve in public · All of Street

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Eight kinds of picture, and what each one asks

StreetPortraitThe FrameLand & WeatherAfter DarkHide & WaitBuilt WorkFast Work
A photographer holding a camera to their eye seen from the side, arms squared, city background out of focus

The entry to read first

Where the edge falls

Everything in the picture is a decision about what to leave out, and the edge is where that decision is made.

Read the entry · All of The Frame

The FrameCorners are where the discipline goes to hide: the edge is looked at last and decides everything.Photograph · credit line

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What each kind costs

Four of eight

A crowded pavement seen from waist height, people close, motion at the edges

Street

Nerve, mostly. You are visible, you are slow, and the person you want to photograph can see you deciding.

Nerve in public

A photographer crouched at the edge of a sports field with a long lens raised, action out of focus beyond

Fast Work

Anticipation. By the time you have seen the thing happen it has gone, so you photograph where you believe it is about to be.

By the time you see it

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Across the sections

Four frames

A canvas hide at the edge of a reed bed before sunrise, mist on the waterHide & WaitIn position before the birds are; the day decides whether anything comes.A portrait sitter waiting on a plain chair in daylight from one tall window, room otherwise darkPortraitOne tall window does most of the work.A contact sheet of small frames on a lightbox with a loupe resting on itThe FrameMost frames are wrong — the ordinary condition of the work.Shingle beach under a low grey sky with sea spray blowing overLand & WeatherWind, salt and horizontal rain.

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Section · After Dark

Colour goes strange and people become smears

Sodium, LED and shop light do not agree with each other, and none of them agree with the sky. What the eye forgives — a face lit from below, a hand moving through three seconds — the frame does not. Brassaï worked the Paris streets at night; Bill Brandt worked London in the blackout, when there was almost nothing to work with.

A night street with people rendered as blurred streaks past a lit shopfront
Held long enough that the walkers did not stay: a crowd rendered as weather past a lit shopfront.Photograph · credit line

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Three more, at size

Photographs first

The entries name work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Frederick H. Evans, Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt, Brassaï, Fay Godwin and Eric Hosking. All twenty-four entries, by section.

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