The Capture vs The Pose

Last week, Guatemalan blogger Iván Mendoza sent me a link to the article Street Photography: The Capture vs. The Pose; an interesting post which tries to define the difference between posed and captured photographs. Below I quote a couple statements from the article to give you an idea, but I must certainly encourage to read it and enjoy the black and white photographs that accompanied the piece.

When a subject poses to have his or her photograph taken, the subject tries to project a message about himself or herself by how he or she “poses”, by the attitude of his or her body language or facial expression.

Portrait and posed photos are contrived declares Chris Weeks in his book Street Photography for the Purist. As much as possible I aim to capture authentic and true slices of life.

Street Photography takes direct aim at this “falseness” by taking the camera into the streets to record “true” documentary moments in life. The subjects are usually unaware as they go about their lives, having no time to strike a pose to enhance or send a particular message about those lives.

With today’s photo I believe that I have captured such that image as described above; an authentic, true, uncontrived slice of life from Antigua Guatemala. What do you think?

© 2012 – 2020, Rudy Giron. All rights reserved.