How a Denver street photographer is bucking AI
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DENVER — Jeff Tidwell began making photos 12 years ago. Today, he’s often hunting for his next frame along 16th Street or Colfax Avenue. Tidwell, a tech-developer by trade, is a staunch critic of AI images that masquerade as photography.
“In a world dominated by Photoshop, curated Instagram feeds, and constant advertising, street photography remains grounded in the authenticity of life. Documenting that raw reality is what keeps me inspired,” writes Tidwell on his website.
Tidwell is a part of the newly-formed Denver Street Photography Collective, a group of six photographers who published their first zine in spring 2024.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
Rocky Mountain PBS: Where do you like to shoot?
Jeff Tidwell: Denver's kind of a difficult town to shoot in. Downtown's been kind of dead since Covid. It’s slowly starting to pick back up.
I shoot a lot downtown around Union Station, 16th Street, and then I shoot a lot on Colfax Avenue, everywhere from East Aurora, down to West Colfax.
I've established a little more of a relationship with the people on Colfax, whereas out here, people are busy. They're running from one place to the other. It's hard to sometimes get that interaction.
RMPBS: Do those relationships lead to better photos?
JT: Sometimes…I feel like having those relationships can lead to some more intimate photos, if you will. Most of my work's candid, so I'm always looking for moments or a good light out on the street, but I also do street portraits. And so I think Colfax lends itself some more of the street portrait opportunities because I can spend time with them, kind of get their story.
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
RMPBS: How did you first get into photography? Were you the type of kid who always had a camera in your hands?
JT: I wish I was that kid. I was always interested in photography, but my high school didn't offer any photography courses. None of my friends were into it. But I was always fascinated with my grandmother's Life magazines and National Geographic.
I played with it a little off and on throughout the years, but it never really stuck.
And then 12 years ago, I went on a mission trip to Romania with one of our churches, and decided to buy a camera off of eBay to stock up. I got some phenomenal photos from that trip.
Something just clicked inside of me…I came back and then found this whole genre of street photography and realized that's what I was doing in Romania.
RMPBS: What caught your attention?
JT: I think it's still what draws me to the streets. You never know what you're going to encounter. It's not like a studio where you set up lighting and you can predict, you know, what you're going to do, plan your shots.
You're at the mercy of fate and luck. And you just never know who you're going to encounter. Some of my favorite photos are from people that I meet and converse with for a while, and then they end up letting me take a portrait of them.
RMPBS: How do people react when you take their picture?
JT: Ninety percent of the time, the two reactions I get are complete ambivalence, they just don't care, or, people think it's funny. I've only had a very few encounters where people got upset.
A lot of times I'll carry, like a zine or book of my work. And if someone gets upset, I'll pull that out and show them what I do. And by the time they're flipping through those pages, most of the time they'll ask me for my Instagram or want me to take a portrait of them.
I think it's a valuable thing for street photographers to always carry a small thing of your work.
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
RMPBS: A lot of your work that I’ve seen is shot through windows. What is it about windows that catches your eye?
JT: I started doing that when I first started in street photography because there's a physical barrier between you and the subject, and when you're photographing strangers, it's very intimidating, right? So that's why I started doing windows because I was like, oh, there's a barrier.
There's a lot of layering that you can do with what's reflected in the window.
Eye contact I think is very vital to those shots because you're engaging with the subject, with that physical presence and separation.
Eye contact is kind of a taboo in street photography. A lot of people try to avoid it because they think that spoils the scene, but I'm drawn to it.
It kind of creates a connection between the subject, the camera, the photographer, and the viewer.
RMPBS: Are there any street photography cliches you find yourself trying to avoid?
JT: I never post pictures of the homeless unless it's a portrait where I've met them and they've given consent for me to take the picture.
They don't have anywhere to go. Whereas most people have a private place to escape to.
RMPBS: Let's talk about 16th Street. What was it like before it closed from a photographic perspective? And now that it's recently reopened, what do you see? Are people coming back?
JT: Before 2020, before COVID, 16th Street was pretty busy. I would come down there all the time. But also, there were no other photographers.
And then they shut down 16th Street to do all this rebranding, remodeling, and that drove even more people away. So I found myself coming down here less and less and really kind of sticking to the side streets.
But all of a sudden, street photography just exploded. And so I would see so many photographers down here after that. They've recently reopened, rebranded and, there was a big reopening celebration a couple of weekends ago, and this place was packed.
I'm hoping these efforts pay off and we can get more people down here.
But there's got to be something because right now you can do anything you want to do with it. It can be used for manipulative purposes or scams. It's kind of scary.
RMPBS: Do you ever shoot color?
JT: If color makes sense to tell the story, I'll leave it as color, but it's almost all black and white. I shoot RAW, but my preview is in black and white. I've always loved black and white.
A friend of mine had a professor that once said, ‘if you're shooting color, you're shooting for color. But if you're shooting black and white, you're shooting for everything else.’
A lot of people think it's easy to shoot in black and white, but I find it very challenging to make it work in certain situations where color gives separation from subject from background. A lot of times you don't get that with black and white.
There's one photographer named John Nolan that I really enjoy. And his whole mantra is the perfect and imperfect. If you look at his wedding photography, a lot of it's out of focus. But he captures these beautiful moments.
I don't need, you know, a $4,000 Sony autofocus lens that's going to focus every time, shooting 120 frames per second. To me, that doesn't matter, because they [the pictures] feel stale a lot of times.
RMPBS: That’s kind of a nice segue, and I know you've talked a little bit on your website and Instagram about AI. How have you already seen AI, changing the landscape of photography?
JT: I was in an AI conversation and one of the panelists who was promoting AI, he said, well, process doesn't matter as long as you get what you want at the end. And to me, I'm like, as an artist, I know process matters. I mean, that's the whole thing.
If you ask an oil painter versus an acrylic painter, like why do they use either? It's because the process matters. So you can get something that looks like photography at the end of the day, but it's still not a photograph. Like I can take a picture of a sculpture, but that doesn't make my picture a sculpture, right?
If people want to create AI images, that's fine… but it is not photography.
It's just a whole different platform for creating something completely different. Whereas photography, even though it can be manipulated and is still based in reality, whereas AI is completely, based on input like prompts.
This is kind of the wild West of AI right now. So, hopefully, there will be some regulation. I don't think it's going to come through legislation or, you know, companies owning the ethics behind it.
But there's got to be something because right now you can do anything you want to do with it. It can be used for manipulative purposes or scams. It's kind of scary.
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
RMPBS: You’ve been shooting for 12 years now, do you have any advice for your younger self?
JT: One of the biggest things that I've learned over that span that I wish I could go back in time and tell myself is, don't worry about this one shot.
If you miss a shot, it's no big deal. Don't stress out over it. Just have fun with it. If you get one, you get one. And if you don't, you don't. Street photography's not like a wedding, where if I miss the kiss, I'm in trouble.
I would rather spend more time playing and experimenting than worrying about whether we got the shot.
Type of story: Q&A
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
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