I get what you're saying, Ray, and I find myself preferring either one of those styles based purely on my mood of the moment. When I was in Africa I sought to make "arty" compositions, but after a while I saw my photos and thought they were too sterile and missed that human touch, so I started making snapshots of the daily mundane things around me, which had me missing the grandeur and beauty of the arty shots... ofcourse some the really, really great photographers manage to combine the two and find incredible beauty in the mundane and daily human life (HCB and Saul Leiter for instance).Interesting, I much prefer the photos in my original link to Peter's also excellent work. I guess it comes down to what you like. Peter's is more realistic and a great depiction of the situation he's looking at. But in terms of light and processing and compositions they basically strike me as just incredibly incredibly good snap-shots. I don't find the photographs particularly interesting beyond the subject matter. Don't get me wrong - I LIKE them a lot. But my initial reaction to these is that they're another collection of very very good photographs from yet another very good photographer who's work is on the web. I guess I don't get any "art" from his stuff - I dont feel moved by it except as by the people in it. Whereas the stuff in my initial link does a lot more for me in terms of light, mood, composition, even variety of subject matter (although that's not fair because that set of Peter's is specifically just "PEOPLE" of Cambodia).
-Ray
I do wonder if my inability to really choose one genre over the other (since I don't quite posess the skills to combine them) leaves me a jack of all trades and a master of none... to the extent that I could ever be a master at either of them, ofcourse