Don Springer, Photographer: 50 Years on the Streets of Philadelphia

Don Springer was born and raised in Philadelphia and grew up in North Philly. In his own words on Inspired Eye: "My name is Don Springer and I was born and raised here, and shot these streets for more than 50 years." He has said he was photographing before he was 13 and had his first darkroom at about that age.

He has told the story of how it started in a few interviews. His father took family snapshots and died when Don was a young boy. Don later found negatives and made a print of his father from them. He told the gear site Shotkit that he "immediately felt the magic" and that nothing else in his life has moved him as much.

Several photographers share his name, including a landscape photographer in Massachusetts. This page is about the Philadelphia street photographer who co-founded Inspired Eye.

Don was drafted and served in Vietnam as an infantryman. He carried a Leica M4 with a 35mm and a 50mm Summicron. He told Shotkit that months with the 35mm trained his eye so well that he could see the frame before he raised the camera, and that this "one camera one lens" habit shaped how he has worked ever since.

In a 2025 interview with Woofer Magazine he said an Australian photographer he calls Jock went out with his squad and "focused my vision on seeing and making the truth." He also said he never published his war photographs, out of respect for the families of soldiers who were killed or wounded.

After he came home, Don started visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There he was introduced to Kneeland "Ding" McNulty, whom he describes as the curator of prints and pictures. McNulty joined the museum in 1952 and became curator of prints in 1964, according to his Princeton Alumni Weekly memorial. He was known as an expert on Japanese prints and wrote the catalogue of Ben Shahn's prints.

Don has called McNulty the closest thing he has to a hero in photography. "Ding helped me find myself in many ways and I owe a debt of life to him," he told Shotkit. The Phototactic sales page describes the education like this: he was McNulty's protege and "spent his time studying original sought-after prints."

That museum training is the piece Olivier Duong says his own photography was missing. Olivier came from graphic design and had the composition side. Don brought decades of looking at original prints with a curator.

Don's link to Minor White comes from his own telling. He told MirrorLessons in 2014 that around 1972 he was "leaning against a tree with Minor White" when White told him a young man would one day reach out with a wonderful idea, and he should be ready. The Inspired Eye about page tells the same story and places it at a Minor White workshop. The Phototactic sales page says he "had long conversations with Minor White."

The sales page also says Don "met, hung out and shot with" Garry Winogrand. We haven't found a separate published account of that, so treat it as Don's own recollection as reported by the course. The interview bonus in the course is where he talks about it: what Winogrand responded to most on the street, and his favorite focal length.

The sales page further says Don's work "has been collected and is featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art." We couldn't confirm this in the museum's online collection, so it rests on the course page too.

Don works mostly in black and white and mostly in Philadelphia. He told the Analogue Street Collective that after Vietnam he walked the streets of Philly, and made many trips to New York, "to find my next image." His line about seeing is worth stealing: "I'd rather see something as if I'm seeing it for the last time."

His approach is intuitive rather than planned. In Woofer Magazine he said he doesn't seek photos: "together with my camera, my eye, heart, and mind, and life, we find each other." Olivier's Eye, Heart and Mind framework in the course uses the same words. On Inspired Eye, Olivier contrasts the two of them: he documents life, while Don leans toward fine art and a personal vision, as in Don's "Dreamcatcher" series.

Shooting the same streets for decades is a skill of its own. Don discussed it on the Inspired Eye podcast episode "Shooting the same place over and over." If your own town feels used up, read street photography in a small town and how to work the scene. For his city, see our Philadelphia street photography guide.

We don't reproduce Don's street photographs here. You can see a selection in the Analogue Street Collective feature and the Woofer Magazine interview.

Don named the Fuji X-Pro1 his favorite street camera in 2014. In his Shotkit feature he carried a Fuji X100F he calls Andre and an Olympus PEN-F he calls Serendipity, mostly with the Olympus 12mm f/2 set to hyperfocal distance. He names his cameras because, as he puts it, "my cameras are my friends."

He also shared an exercise he says he taught for many years, for finding your natural focal length:

1. Walk somewhere unfamiliar with a zoom lens.
2. When a scene interests you, frame it in your mind first.
3. Raise the camera and zoom in and out, without moving your feet, until the screen matches the frame in your head.
4. Repeat it many times. The focal length you keep landing on is your natural field of view.

For more on choosing a lens, see the best lens for street photography. Don also has a warning from experience: a heavy camera and fast lens hung from his neck gave him serious neck pain, so keep your street kit light.

Don and Olivier met on a photography forum and started Inspired Eye together, first as a PDF magazine featuring working photographers. Olivier's Inspired Eye posts call Don the magazine's second editor in chief. Don handled many of the photographer interviews.

Their collaboration led to Phototactic: Street Photography Secrets, the online street photography course Olivier built from his design system and Don's experience. The course page presents it as short videos of 3 to 5 minutes, designed to change your images in as little as 10 days, sold for one payment of $297 with a 60 day money back guarantee.

One of its six bonuses is a two hour interview in which Olivier asks Don about the curator who trained him and the two famous photographers he met. The sales page lists what it covers:

• What elements of a photo attract the attention of a museum curator.
• The one thing Garry Winogrand responded to most in the streets.
• What made Minor White "stop dead in his tracks."
• Garry Winogrand's favorite focal length.
• A simple organization system many famous photographers have used.

The sales page says Olivier and Don have mentored dozens of photographers and curated the images of more than 400 others. That is their background. The course itself doesn't include critique of your photos, mentoring, a forum or a community. Read the Phototactic review for the full picture, and Olivier Duong's profile for the other half of the team.