September 2026 Photo Contest Discussion Thread: "The Street as a Livelihood" (page 5 of 12)

Wait, 2000 rupees?

There's an extra zero, right?

How come 2000 rupees?

There’s an extra zero, right?

Pagal went a little overboard—Richard gave the guy the equivalent of 10 € (who then followed him everywhere for 2 days). I wanted to post this photo in the contest, but it’s blurry 🙁

Thanks so much for the slideshow! I love the idea of voting without knowing the names, but please, not this month 😅

You won, so you gotta suffer.

5 times too much instead of 10... And I’m still being generous...

No wonder he followed you everywhere after that! 😄

Thanks Julie for jumping in! ;)

But I don’t see the photographers’ names or the photo numbers in this slideshow?

Hi, Joomeo was "sold" to Photoweb/Cloud, and now we really don’t have access to the famous EXIF data anymore. I’ll look into the issue with Photoweb support. If EXIF info isn’t visible anymore... we’ll have to vote for photos the old-school way (e.g., photo 13 gets 3 points) due to technical constraints. That also means more management work for me. :/ You can see the photo number at the top of the image, or if you click on a photo in the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen. JULIE

Of all the countries I've visited, it's in India that I saw the most people earning their living on the streets, often under very harsh conditions. Here are some photos to bear witness: barber-street hairdressers, chai sellers, delivery workers carrying who-knows-what, drink and food vendors.

















These photos were taken in New Delhi

A few photos taken in Morocco. There are those who sell on the street, with a more or less modest display:





But also those who use the street as a workshop, like this woodturner making skewer handles.

All over Thailand, but especially in Bangkok.

More street scenes from Vietnam. Like in other countries, the street is used for selling, transporting, but it also serves as a workshop for making and repairing things...

Thailand is famous for the quality of its street food. Small stalls line the sidewalks of business districts in Bangkok all day long: sliced fruit, pastries, soft-boiled eggs in the morning, takeaway meals at lunch and dinner, and traditional flower garlands for spirit house offerings.









Every evening, I’d buy my girlfriend a "mango sticky rice" from the corner of Silom Road and Sala Daeng Road 😉🙂 Sausage vendor in a parking lot in Isan



Same kind of sales in Chiang Mai in the morning when people head to work

Hey, I’ve got the same one in Pagal colors 😂



Otherwise, your Ajmer photo really hits hard 😱. It reminds me of my first trip to India a long time ago. A temple by the sea in Bombay, with a circle of amputees chanting incantations while each shook their stump toward the sky!!

They were *so* good at the drama to give you a serious dose of culture shock 😂.

It’s less funny to hear they’re voluntarily amputated by their families to pursue a "career" as beggars 😢

Hi Christelle!

Ravanhatta players are pretty common on the streets of Rajasthan. I always have at least one photo of them from every trip to the region.

I totally know which Bombay mausoleum you're talking about. It's Hajji Ali, and when I posted my Ajmer photo, I also thought about the beggars there—pretty demonstrative, to say the least... You see them near Delhi's mausoleums too.

Good evening,

In color too, this albino musician in Yunnan (China).

On Elephantine Island, on the Nile near Aswan (Egypt), a duo of street musicians.

On a bridge in Semarang (Java Island, Indonesia), a duo of percussionists.

On the streets of Rajasthan

water vendor











milk delivery man

A few photos taken in Istanbul: musicians, a vendor selling an unidentified vegetable, and a shoe shiner.

Good evening, I’m not sulking, but I don’t have anything to submit for this theme. With fewer photos from fewer countries than other members, that doesn’t surprise me (and it’d be the same for other themes). If I’d spent September taking 2 or 3 photos for this contest, I know exactly what I would’ve tried to capture: street theater, right in line with Pagaljavab’s theme, in my opinion—if it’s done by professionals (not amateurs: that’s what *earning a living* means). I would’ve tried two shots: 1. Very low-budget, an improvised scene in a street corner or square, with the audience just a few meters from the performers. 2. At the other end of the spectrum, a big-budget spectacle—I’m thinking of the Royal De Luxe company, famous for creating "giants" or "city machines." The economics of this activity often rely on more than just money from the public: funding from cities, etc. For example, Royal De Luxe’s shows are always free for spectators (yet the performers and crew *do* earn a living from street performances).

This is a call: I haven’t seen any street theater photos. A few for other arts—music, painting. If anyone wants to—and can—tackle the theme this way... there’s still a week left.

If we can't have street theater with Michel, here’s almost beach theater instead! 😄

Hi, Your idea for street theater photos is great, but it’s tough to take a good shot without recognizable spectators. I’ve experienced this in Evian, where the town replaced Christmas markets with performances by the Théâtre de la Toupine. There were driftwood sculptures all over the city, a different theme each year, musicians and storytellers in really original costumes, homemade instruments, whimsical carousels powered by parents pedaling, and stalls run by local associations—nothing commercial. But how do you take a photo without the awestruck gaze of the audience? That raises the question of image rights, whereas in my photos taken in India or Asia, I make sure people agree to be photographed, and it works out. I even photographed women working on construction sites in Rajasthan—they were clearly proud that I was interested in them despite their modest circumstances and gave me beautiful smiles...but these are portraits that don’t show they’re working in a trench in Bundi with their kids playing around. So, they wouldn’t fit this contest.