Favorite 2011 picture series : a few statistics and thoughts

First let me thank all of you that submitted a picture. I think this was a good experience as it let us discover a lot of photographers and their work. 35 photographs were posted and I could not help doing a little analysis of the work submitted. I thought some of you would also be interested to discover the results. By no means it represents the global street photography community, but probably a good view on the readership of this website.

Place where picture was taken :
55% : Europe
20% : North America
12% : Asia
6% : Oceania
2% : Middle East
2% : South America

So Europe is the main stage for street photography. Not so surprising, this is a Western world hobby, right ? 😉 Too bad there were so few pictures from other continents, and none from Africa.

Female or Male :
Female : 9%
Male : 91%

Is street photography a male discipline ? Certainly not, even though I think there is definitely a majority of male. Or maybe female street photographers just don’t hang on the internet and spend more time on the streets .

B&W of Color :
B&W : 62%
Color : 38%

I was surprised to see so many B&W submissions. Are the colors of our times not tempting ? Or does street photography have to be in B&W ?

Picture orientation :
Landscape : 69%
Portrait : 17%
Square : 11%
Panoramic : 3%

Since most camera use the 24x36mm format, it isn’t so surprising to see landscape as the favorite orientation. Not that square is not too far from portrait. Who said you should not crop ? 😉

Digital or film :
Digital : 89%
Film : 11%

In some ways sad, but digital has completely taken over. Or maybe film people don’t bother scanning their pictures.

Camera used :
Leica M9 : 31%
Leica M8 : 14%
Leica film : 9%
DSLR : 20%
4/3rds : 9%
P&S : 9%
Xpan : 3%

More than 50% of submission were taken with a Leica M. The best camera for street photography ? There is some of that, but I think this data represents mainly the readers of this website. Indeed, I shoot Leica and write a lot about rangefinders and their use.

This concludes the 2011 favorite series. It will be repeated in the future, maybe in a new format. I hope you enjoyed it and thanks again to all participants. I will end by posting our favorite picture of 2011, the one that someone else took for us. 😉  (click on picture for high res)

Taken on the Great Salt Lake in Bolivia – El Salar

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