STREETWISE
When people talk about street smarts they’re talking about a variety of things: experience, awareness of your surroundings, a knowledge of what to do and what not to do in a given situation—what’s understood about all these things is that they aren’t things you’ll learn from books. A great street photographer has their own kind of smarts: patience, quick reflexes, an eye for composition, an understanding of people, a feel for when to close the shutter. Most importantly, a great street photographer has the wisdom to recognize when all these things come together and make a picture, a unified image with something to say, that despite the myriad possibilities that went into its making, feels like it couldn’t have been any other way.