The Great Hunt in the streets and elsewhere by Jacob Carah

David Labelle and Snyder both know what it takes to take a good picture. In Labelle's chapters in "The Great Picture Hunt " he does a thorough job of outlining what it takes to do feature pictures or enterprising shots. In comparison to Snyder's portfolio of street pictures there is a common thread of catching a moment that tells a story. As I looked through the photos in Snyder's portfolio they seemed to parallel Labelle's criteria for images that tell a compelling story. Although the pictures in the chapters of the Great Picture Hunt were sort of grainy I found the variety of photos really interesting.

The section that I got caught up on and actually tried to apply was the cruising section. Like in Snyder's roving pictures throughout the US and Europe, cruising pictures really seem to catch moments in a quite literal sense. This is where Labelle's hunting metaphor really spurred me to try these methods out on my own. I cruised for a little while on Broadway and a few side streets without any particular direction in mind to find a subject for my three photos assignment. I attempted to apply the perspective of Snyder in his reference to "photography's power to record the river of life." Downtown Columbia may not seem like a fluid torrent of existence at first glance, but I did find that one can apply the fundamentals of a good picture that Labelle outlined. While I don't know for sure if I got a feature photo, I did manage to capture some odd or perhaps unique moments just by keeping my camera ready and sighted.

In applying a sort of hands on approach to the readings, I noticed that Labelle had made some very obvious but also very key observations about how to set up a good picture. One, composition is everywhere, from framing to background everthing has a use and form. Secondly, it helps to step outside of your comfort zone in terms of position, angle and range; when I actually started kneeling, bending and climbing over everything, I felt my pictures became less boring. Finally, the best point I took away was from Labelle in that a good photographer must be patient and try to capture in a simple way the originality of a moment. As Labelle put it, moments are, "fleeting capsules of life, usually found at the creast of an emotional wave." Yet, my favorite moment in the pictures I looked at was by Snyder; it is of a little boy at Tomkins Square Park in New York City laughing as he is running through a sprinkler. The image conveys the elements that Labelle outlined that make a good picture; it has a lot of emotion and composition that conveys an original humorous moment of youth.