Street photographers.... what lenses?

[Attonine]

That's the luck of the draw in many cases. Subject and scene dependent.

If a photographer's got plenty of time and a subject that's not moving all that quickly; or a scene that's relatively static, getting it in frame is trivial.

As far as your example of great photographers that show scenes as shot, know that for each scene they show as shot, there's an incredibly large quantity of scenes they shot that will never see the light of day.

Absolutely there are more frames taken and thrown away than keepers. Editing (selection) is an extremely important skill. Most people should in fact show less images than they do. It has been stated that your ability as a photographer can be seen more from the images you choose not to show than the images you show. Cartier Bresson famously insisted on looking at contact sheets from applicants to Magnum (but refused to allow anyone to see his own contact sheets!), he wanted to see the images that were not shown. Martin Parr relates a story where Cartier Bresson flipped the contact sheet upside down as he would only look at the composition, the "shape" of the images, he wouldn't look at the prints.

To get a great shot luck is often involved, some scene unfolding right in front of your eyes and you just so happen to be on the right side of the street at the right time etc. It would be disingenuous though to put Street Photography down to luck and solely luck, there is a great deal of skill involved, it's not easy.

 

[FieldingMellish]

Absolutely there are more frames taken and thrown away than keepers. Editing (selection) is an extremely important skill. Most people should in fact show less images than they do. It has been stated that your ability as a photographer can be seen more from the images you choose not to show than the images you show. Cartier Bresson famously insisted on looking at contact sheets from applicants to Magnum (but refused to allow anyone to see his own contact sheets!), he wanted to see the images that were not shown. Martin Parr relates a story where Cartier Bresson flipped the contact sheet upside down as he would only look at the composition, the "shape" of the images, he wouldn't look at the prints.

To get a great shot luck is often involved, some scene unfolding right in front of your eyes and you just so happen to be on the right side of the street at the right time etc. It would be disingenuous though to put Street Photography down to luck and solely luck, there is a great deal of skill involved, it's not easy.

I did not say to you that I accord street photography to the realm of the lucky.

Although a great golfer once said, the more practice I get, the luckier I get.