Why I Love Street Photography so Much!

Street photography gives me a reason to live! To thrive! To explore, to make art, and to share.

Being more connected to the world around ourselves

I think street photography is the antidote to our cell-phone addicted society.

I know myself: if I got a phone, I cannot pay attention to the external world. Street photography affords me the opportunity to pay attention. Why? If I desire to make street photos, I gotta pay attention!

Older couple having dinner at fancy restaurant.

Interacting with strangers

Street photography also gives me an opportunity to interact more with strangers.

Why interact with strangers? We learn more about others, other customs, we become less fearful of others, we become more self-confident, more bold, more brazen, and more epic!

The joy of composition

I love composition. Why? To me, composition is insanely fun. It is like practicing scales on a guitar. There is an inherent joy in practicing composition. Also learning composition from other masters of photography!

Physiological thriving

They say ‘sitting is the new smoking’. Probably right.

You cannot shoot street photography while sitting. We must move!

My thought:

The purpose of the human brain is to move. If we no longer move, we have no more use of a brain.

Thus, when we fail to move much in our everyday lives, we start developing mental dysfunctions (depression, anxiety, etc). Therefore street photography (walking around and street photography) I think is an effective treatment at attacking the fundamentals of depression.

If we believe depression as a physiological problem, then we can only solve it by PHYSIOLOGICAL changes (moving more, lifting more weights, and interacting more with the external/embodied reality!)

Expressing love for humanity

This is something interesting I’ve noticed for street photographers:

You can classify street photographers into two categories. First category loves humanity. Second category hates humanity.

If you play psychologist when studying other photographers, I think you can determine this difference.

I’ve noticed that some photographers are bitter towards humanity, towards reality, and they hate their own lives. Therefore when they go out to make photos, they’re trying to get some sort of “revenge” on reality via their photos. When they go out to shoot street photography, their photos are full of malice and pettiness. I think this is rooted in their own personal insecurity.

However we anthro-philia photographers (lovers of humanity), we make photos as an expression of gratitude, love, and delight in humanity.