The photographer behind a popular blog on capturing the community behind the artwork Behind the Lens looks at architectural photographers both professional and amateur, examining how they got their start, stories from their portfolios, and tricks to capturing great design. Have a lensman in mind" Send links to portfolios (no photo files) to [email protected].
Anybody can take a photo of graffiti and street art. That?s been made abundantly clear on Instagram and other social media channels. But to capture artwork and truly provide context, a sense of place, and?when everything aligns?a sense of awe, takes not only skills but a deep understanding of place.
Conrad Benner, the Philadelphia native behind the six-year-old Streets Dept blog and a popular Instagram account, has turned a continued fascination with his city, deep connections to the street art community, and a great eye into a long-running document of a fertile street art scene. While New York often gets credit as the birthplace of graffiti and street art, Philadelphia, a city with a large population of students and a world-renowned city mural program, has both a huge contemporary art scene and a deep history of street art. Darryl McCray, or Cornbread, who is considered one of the progenitors of street art, made his name tagging around the city in the late ?60s, and even made the papers for writing ?Cornbread Lives? on an elephant in the Philadelphia Zoo.

A mural by artist Septic at Pi...