Growth Happens In The Stretch Zone!

Street photography is meant to feel alive, but online it can turn into constant arguments about who’s doing it “properly”. Think of the StreetSnappers podcast as a virtual pub instead: honest chat, no sniping, and enough practical detail that you can actually improve your work. That starts with a listener question that every zine-maker has faced sooner or later: why do my black and white images lose their punch in CMYK printing? We dig into rich black on uncoated paper, why screens lie, and how better tonal separation, proper greyscale conversion, and smart curve work in Lightroom, Photoshop, or Capture One can lift your pages from grey salad to crisp blacks and clean whites.

Then we go deeper on a creative problem that sits behind most ‘stuck’ portfolios: comfort zones. Using the comfort-stretch-panic model (borrowed from military training), we break down what each zone looks like for street photographers, why growth happens near the top of stretch, and why panic is not brave, it is counterproductive. If your work feels empty or predictable, the answer is not a reckless leap, it is a controlled push with repeatable challenges you can sustain.

Along the way there’s a quick beer review, a grounded take on The Art of Street Photography by Josh Jackson and Sean Tucker, and a personal update on shooting high contrast monochrome JPEGs on the Leica M11 after a week in Prague. We also answer a question about having a co-host, and I finish by lobbing an ex-Army hand grenade at a stubborn myth: expensive gear will not make you a better street photographer. If you’ve got thoughts, record a short voice note and send it over, then subscribe, share the show with a mate, and leave a review so more street shooters can find us.

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LINKS FROM TODAY'S SHOW:

StreetSnappers workshops

Klick Magazine: https://www.klickmagazine.com

Brian's email: brian@streetsnappers.com

Transcript

Welcome To The Virtual Pub

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I'd like to think of this show as a kind of virtual pub, the Street Snappers Alums. A lively place where we can talk all things street photography and be honest with each other, without anyone getting too upset. So, no straighteners in the car park tonight, chaps, or you'll be barred. I don't know what it is about street photography, but people do seem to get very exercised and proprietorial about their views in a way that I don't think you get in other genres like wildlife or portrait photography. But people I don't know, people get upset, don't they? And everybody's arguing all the time on social media and sniping at each other. But we're having none of that here. We may very gently agree to disagree from time to time, but we'll always shake hands and stay friends. Isn't that nice. Well, this is episode 12, and welcome by the way, um, which by my reckoning means that we've been doing this for about six months. Isn't that good? As I've said before, I had no idea when I started this whether it would be a success or not, and quite honestly, the response has blown me away, so thank you as always for your continued support. I'm always on the lookout for street photography podcasts and trying to see what's out there. But I think there are relatively few about. I don't know what it is, maybe I've filled a gap. Actually, I heard this morning that the long established Fuji cast is now kaput, which I think is a real shame. Okay, it was a bit tilted towards weddings and gear, but it was always worth listening to, I think, and Neil and Kevin put on a good show, and I think they made a good team. But life goes

Rich Blacks For CMYK Zines

SPEAKER_00 2:07

on. So let's start today's show with one of your questions, and this one's via email from John in Cheshire, and it's on the subject of black and white. It's a simple question. John asks, How do you get rich black in a CMYK zine? Right, in case you didn't know, when John says CMYK, he's referring to full colour printing, and CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, representing the the four inks that are mixed together in thousands of permutations to get the exact colours we need. And when he says zine, what we're going to talk about now equally applies to photo books and probably also prints, although I think that is probably a bit more specialised and fine arty, depending on what kind of printer you have. So let's assume books and zines for now. John gave me a bit more background in his email, saying that he'd just produced a zine and the rich black of the black and white shots was unacceptable. John's been shooting a project in Japan and I think in a Dido Moriama-ish style, which resonates with me. So the D pinky blacks are critical here, and he needs to get this right. Well, this is a common problem, John, and firstly it's a bigger problem if you're using uncoated paper, which I suspect you are because your previous scenes were on lovely uncoated stuff. And I love uncoated paper stock too, but it really absorbs the ink like there's no tomorrow. And you're probably gonna need to go even blacker with the blacks to compensate for this. So if you're printing on uncoated or any other matte stock, bear in mind that blacks absorb into black the the black ink absorbs into the paper fibers, and this means the images lose contrast and punch. You tend not to have these issues with glossy stock, which just seems to retain the density more easily. Secondly, there's often a perception issue in that the perception of black is relational, and by that I mean deep blacks look and feel deeper when the adjacent tones are brighter and the compositions are clean and simple. It's a mistake to make the overall image darker to compensate. You need to make local rather than global adjustments. And you may have noticed that the classic Japanese provoke books or Japanese newspapers, photographic prints, work from people like Moriama, Suzuki, they all feel so dense, and this is because they use aggressive tonal separation and graphic structure, not just dark exposure. I think this is a really important point, and it's easy to lose sight of it. So my third bit of advice here is make sure you work in grayscale and not desaturated RGB. Don't simply remove saturation but convert using proper black and white mixing so that you can control each luminance channel individually. This itself will give you cleaner blacks, better tonal hierarchy, and the printed version will just look so much stronger. What else can we do? Well, you've got to get your file preparation right. But even before you get to that, it's worth doing a quick check on your S curve in Photoshop or Lightroom or Capture One or whatever it is you use. So in the S curve, I'd be inclined to pull the shadows back a bit and lift the highlights, but just make sure you do keep some separation in the dark greys. If you don't do this, the danger is that the shadow areas become featureless black patches when they're printed. Then, if this looks slightly too contrasty on the screen, it's probably about right for paper. That's a good yardstick. You can also, or you should also, avoid the muddy middle greys. And a common problem we see in street photography zines is that everything lives in zones four to six, resulting in really flat pages, weak reproduction, and it's quite honestly all a bit of a grey salad. Good zines usually have true blacks, strong whites, and a much simpler tonal structure. Nice tones doesn't cut it here, I'm afraid. Sorry about the dog barking in the background, it's hot here, it's a hot day, and I've got the window open, and next door's bloody dog is driving me mad. So that would be my approach. But there again, I'm no real expert in printing, John, and I would always speak to your printer first if you have any concerns. They're usually really helpful, and they would much rather steer you in the right direction at the outset rather than have you unhappy with the with the final result.

Comfort Stretch Panic Explained

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Right, take a deep breath, buckle up, pour yourself a drink. I want to revisit something I touched on in episode six, and that's about comfort zones. Looking back on that episode, I think we only really scratched the surface. Then I had an email question from Angus in Windsor, which made me think that we need to dig a little deeper. Angus said, I keep hearing on YouTube that I must get out of my comfort zone. Why? I'm very happy in my comfort zone. I think we had a similar question before actually, but this this is a new one from Angus. So the first point is, does this really matter? Well, that depends on you. If you're quite happy in your comfort zone and operating within your limits, then that might be fine for you. And I get it, you're enjoying your street photography, you're happy with your lot, you don't see the need to make any great progress in any way. Great. As you were. Carry on. But the majority of photographers who I meet and work with do want more. They want to move on, they want to progress, and you know, completely understandable. So they should. So this segment is more for them, and I hope you're one of them. So it's for you. Yes, you. Okay, so to start with, comfort means different things to different people. It could mean being comfortable and therefore not nervous or awkward about shooting strangers in the street. It could mean being very happy with what you're already doing. It could mean being laid back and a bit unambitious about your street photography. You're having a great time, you're enjoying the process. No problem with any of this whatsoever. But as I sometimes do with some of these behavioural issues, I'm gonna dig into some military wisdom, which is actually usually rather wise. And I'm gonna give you a model or a framework which you can adopt. And this is something I quite find quite helpful when I'm teaching street photography. It's called the comfort stretch panic model. Comfort stretch panic. Confuse? Don't be, I will explain. So the comfort stretch panic model is something used during officer training at Sandhurst and other places, I'm sure. And the idea is that you move out of your comfort zone in a controlled way. And this thinking translates perfectly to the world of street photography. And this model explains where learning and growth actually happen. And it works like this. There are basically three zones in your learning and development. Either as a rookie army officer or as a street photographer, your comfort zone, your stretch zone, and your panic zone. The comfort stretch panic model. The accepted wisdom here is that in order to really grow, you need to be aiming to get yourself into the upper end of the stretch zone, that middle zone. But let me just explain those zones in a little more detail and this will just start to make more sense. So starting with the comfort zone, this is where everything feels safe and predictable. So as a street photographer, that might mean, for example, that you usually shoot in the same locations, or you use the same lens and settings all the time. Not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. Or you maintain too safe a distance and you shoot from too far away, which is a common issue. Maybe you avoid interacting with strangers. Again, not always a bad thing, but bear with me for now. Or maybe you just take the the same type of images over and over again and you can't see any real progress happening. The problem for us here in our world is that comfort rarely produces new and interesting work. You don't see many good artists of any kind who live in the comfort zone. You stay competent, that's fine, but you practice familiar routines and you don't grow. So other characteristics of being in the comfort zone could include low anxiety, routine behaviour, minimal risk taking, limited growth, and working on skills that you've already mastered. It's kind of an easy way out, isn't it? Now, if we applied this to a military setting, staying permanently in the comfort zone will be seen as a problem because soldiers won't develop adaptability or resilience under pressure and they won't be prepared to deal with the unexpected. I'm sure you see some parallels here. So it's not ideal then. Next we have the stretch zone. As you approach the stretch zone, you're slightly uncomfortable, but still functioning well. In street photography terms, you could be starting to get physically closer to subjects, for example. You could be starting to work in black and white rather than your usual colour, or vice versa. You could be experimenting with different focal lengths. You could be shooting street portraits, possibly against your natural instincts. You could be shooting projects rather than collecting random images. Or perhaps you're shooting in unfamiliar or even uncomfortable places. So this zone, the stretch zone, this is where it gets interesting, really interesting, and it's where most creative development happens. You're challenged, but you're not overwhelmed. Key point here. And in fact, you're challenged enough to adapt and improve, but you're still saying that staying the right side of overwhelmed. So other characteristics of being in the stretch zone could include elevated awareness, which is brilliant for us, of course, increased learning, building resilience, better decision making under pressure. And guess what? All these are brilliant for street photography. And again, using a military analogy, putting recruits in the stretch zone will build inoculation to stress. What a great point. It'll develop confidence under pressure, it'll just help you foster a bit of emotional control. But there is a limit. There is a limit. Performance improves with stress up to an optimal point, and then it starts to drop off when the stress becomes excessive. So the challenge for you now is to gradually increase the pressure over time until you reach that top edge of the stretch zone. Just short of panic, and this is where you see real changes. This is where the magic happens. The higher up the stress zone you go, the better. But don't stray into the panic zone. So finally, the panic zone. This is where stress becomes so high that performance starts to deteriorate. Here, for example, you might push yourself to confront people when you know you're terrified of conflict. You may shoot somewhere that is genuinely unsafe. You may attempt a major project that is way outside your your normal skill set. You're unprepared for it. Perhaps you're just setting yourself completely unrealistic expectations. In the panic zone, you stop seeing. You become self-conscious and reactive rather than observant. So you're pushing yourself way outside your comfort zones, and whatever the YouTubers tell you, this ain't gonna do you much good. So back in the real world of the street, if your street photography feels empty or predictable or mundane or boring, or you're struggling to find things to shoot, this usually means you're too relaxed in the comfort zone and you're operating too comfortably within your limits. Do you ever feel like that? I mean I do sometimes. Empty, predictable, boring, mundane, struggling to find things to shoot. I think it probably affects us all. But the solution then isn't a massive leap into the panic zone. Don't simply go berserk and start immediately start shooting stuff you would never in a million years do. Don't morph from Saul Leiter into Bruce Gilden overnight. Soldiers who go into the panic zone too quickly start to make poor decisions, they fail to follow training, they suffer emotional collapse, and they make dangerous mistakes. And they stop learning due to tunnel vision. So as they're pushed to get close to this zone, but to stop short of it, they're in the optimal point. The aim isn't panic itself, it's expanding the stress zone so that these situations that once cause panic now become manageable. I'll say that again. The aim is not panic itself, it's express expanding the stress zone so that situations which maybe once caused you panic are now manageable. You're making a deliberate and controlled move into stretch and then staying there, but constantly pushing the boundaries in that stretch zone. Now you're learning. Now you're growing. Now you're developing. Who doesn't want to be here? But there's always a big but, said Benny Hill. This won't happen on its own, and it needs some conscious input from you. I won't say much more about this today, but I'll I'll just leave though these thoughts to percolate in another in another episode in the not too distant future. I'll produce a part two of this and I'll give you some pragmatic tactics for moving moving through these zones. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this, and I'd like to do that in the form of sound bites rather than you emailing me stuff. Just grab your phone, record a few sentences with your thoughts on your Voice Notes app or whatever it's called on your phone, and then just email them to me, Brian at streetsnappers.com, and I'll do my best to include them in the follow-up piece. I won't be able to include them all, but I'd love to hear your thoughts anyway. I'll pop my email address in the show notes. So we will come back to that.

Send Voice Notes For Part Two

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Well, you've heard of a let's lighten up a bit. You've heard of a a gear review. Well, this is a new slot on the show, and it's a beer review. I'm sweltering up here in my loft, sweating cobs, as they say in these parts, and I need to pick me up. Listen to this. Oh, what a lovely sound. I hope the mic picked that up. And oops. If any of you are old enough to listen to this. If any of you are old enough to remember Keith Floyd's cookery programmes in the 80s on the BBC, you remember that he was always stopping for a quick slurp, mid-job. And I always thought that was a great idea.

A Quick Beer Review Break

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So here we go. It says on the can, the eagle has landed, and there's a picture of an eagle there. It's a nice yellow can. Let's have a taste. Very nice. Well, of course it's very nice. So Wingman, it says on the tin is a session IPA, which probably means it's a bit light and fluffy. Well, it is light, but it's you know citrusy, hoppy, bit too light for my taste, but probably great for this weather. And I'm actually going cycling after I finished recording this, so one's probably enough. And I'll get onto something stronger a little bit later.

Book Review On Street Photography

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Right, back to business and it's book review time. One book that landed on my desk this week, and one that a lot of people are seem to be talking about, is one that's a joint venture between Josh Jackson and Sean Tucker. At first I thought this was a bit of an odd combination because I always thought that Jackson was a street photographer and Tucker wasn't. Not really. Anyway, this book is called The Art of Street Photography, and it's just been published by ILEx, and the ticket price is 30 quid. So what can I tell you about this book? Well, I've spent a week with it, and I must say I quite like it. It appears that the majority of the images in the book are from Josh Josh Jackson. That's quite hard to say when you've had a when you're halfway through a kind of wingman. Josh Jackson. And the majority of the writing is from Tucker, and I guess that's the right way around. I think Tucker's images are okay, but not remarkable. I think Josh's images are a bit more striking. There are some very good points in here about finding your voice, how to present yourself on the streets, composition, arguments for shooting black and white over colour, and lots, lots more. There's plenty of advice and encouragement spread over what, 270 pages. And of course there are some great images, but I will point out that these images lean towards a more aesthetic style of street photography rather than the traditional observational street photography that I tend to shoot. So if the aesthetic of approach floats your boat, then you'll be well and truly afloat. One slight niggle is that the images don't necessarily relate to the adjacent text, and I think they could have been made to work harder had they been used to illustrate specific points. And the captions on the pictures just say the date and location. They don't bear any relation to the to the accompanying narrative. So I think maybe that was m a missed opportunity. It's a little wordy in places, which I kind of expect but it's all sensible stuff. You know, you could n nothing there you could really strongly disagree with. It's definitely worth a look. I think it's definitely worth 30 quid. Now something's just reminded me, I've just seen a post-it note on my desk while we're on the subject of this book. In the forthcoming issue of Click magazine, which I know you know I know you know that I like. Issue 10, I think, is about to come out. There's an interview with Sean Ticker Ticker, Sean this beer. Sean Tucker about how he and Josh collaborated to put the book together. So I'm sure it'll make an interesting read. And I understand that the magazine is at the printers as we speak and will be out soon. And I'll put a link in the show notes for you. So do buy the book. I I think it's a good read. I

Switching To High Contrast Monochrome

SPEAKER_00 21:45

mentioned in episode ten that I was moving towards a black and white only period in order to give myself a big creative kick in the pants. And I promise to keep you updated about my new exciting journey. Well, I've started early. Earlier than anticipated, and I just got back from a week in Prague where I'd been working on a couple of projects, fully intending to shoot colour for a week, but actually I set my M11 up to shoot high contrast black and white JPEGs, and I'm pretty pleased with what I'm seeing, actually. I've been shooting RAW plus JPEG as usual, just in case. But normally I would ditch the JPEG and just use the RAW file. But this time I think I'm just going to be using the JPEGs. They look the Leica high contrast JPEGs are just looking pretty rich and contrasty and dense. And the blacks are great. We know we're talking about inky blacks before. Out of the camera, they're coming out pretty good. Now, this is interesting. I've already got lots of existing material for this project from previous trips, and it's mostly in colour. And I'm now very tempted to convert some of these older images to monochrome just to fit the project. Now, this isn't something I normally do, as I prefer to shoot mono with intent and a sense of purpose, and not simply do a conversion after the event. I know lots of us do this, but I've always had an aversion to it, and I believe that you need to shoot mono intentionally. And if you do, the image will all be always be better for it. But I'm going to give it a go and see what I can make of it. I will keep you informed, and there may well be a zine coming your way soon.

Should The Show Have A Co Host

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Here's an emailed quickie question from Annalise, who's from Dublin. Have you ever thought of having a co-host for this show? Interesting question, Annalise, especially in light of today's announcement that the FujiCast is no longer. And yes, I have thought about having a co-host, and I'd certainly consider it. But I guess I've just not come across the right person yet. Are you volunteering? As you know, if you're a regular at the bar of the Street Snappers Arms, as landlord I'm entitled to offload a few of my opinions.

Expensive Gear Will Not Help

SPEAKER_00 24:14

And as usual, I have my ex Army hand grenade in my hand and I'm gonna metaphorically lob it at an issue I want to have a rant about. And today's short rant is about the belief that expensive gear will make you a better street photographer. Well guess what? It won't. Did Gary Winnegrand have sixty megapixels at his disposal? Did Saul Leiter have eleven autofocus modes to play with? Did Cartier Bresson have focus stacking? Whatever that means. Of course they didn't. Buying new expensive gear may make it'll make you feel better about your street photography, hey, maybe no bad thing, but it won't make one scrap of difference to what you actually create. So my advice is not to make gear the excuse. And please don't think that spending five grand on a new camera is going to change everything. It won't. It might improve the user experience, so that's quite important, and it makes the journey more pleasurable. And if this is your if this is your hobby, then that's actually no bad thing. But it won't make the pictures any better. So my little rant here is not about people who have expensive gear, I guess I'm one of them. It's more about people who have the expectation that certain gear will make them better street photographers, when they should be concentrating on upping their skills rather than upping the gear. It's something we see a lot, isn't it? You know, people they they see somebody in a magazine or a YouTuber with the the the latest liker, and they like the pictures he or she shoots, and they think, oh, I I I can if I get that liker, I can take pictures like that. It's not gonna happen, is it? It's you know, it is really just a waste of your hard-earned cash. So it's something I would avoid at

Tell Me What You Want

SPEAKER_00 26:10

all costs. Well, I think I've said enough for one day. I I I w I was gonna say more, but I'm sweltering up here in my loft, and uh I'm actually thinking about the the rest of the beer in the fridge two floors down, uh, because I'm coming to the end of this one now. So I'm gonna call time at the Street Snappers Arms. Uh but a quick question for you before I say night night. What do you think of the average length of these shows? They seem to be averaging the 30 to 40 minute mark, some a bit longer, some a bit shorter. What do you think about 40-ish minutes? Too long, too short, about right? Do you want to hear more? Also, what what do you want in the show? Tell me, I'd love to have your emails, or you know, if you again send me a voice note, and if I if I get a nice selection of voice notes, I'll publish them together and I'll do a little piece on you know what you want out of a street photography podcast. I'm new at this, you know I am, and I'm kind of feeling my finding my feet as I go along. So your views, your kind of founder members, you lot, you know, the early adopters, and I'm so grateful for that. And in return, I'd like to incorporate your views as as much as I possibly can, but I'm not doing extensive gear reviews. Extensive beer reviews, maybe.