[arigram]

Ari, you make an interesting opening by "learning to like what you dislike" so I'd like to know more about how you've dealt with situations in which a big eyesore was unavoidable to the picture you wanted to take. In what sense did you "like" the thing? Did you just reinterpreted it in another way? Did you sidestepped it?

I make it part of what the photograph is about. I live in an ugly city, so often there will be something ugly in the composition, but because street photography is about the "reality" of the environment, you not only accept it but use it. A pretty little girl in her best dress and a balloon on the street has a relationship with the mundane car or even dirty garbage can that makes the photograph. So, the photograph is not just the girl, but the girl+garbage can, beauty and the beast.
There are too many street photographers to mention but what their work is about, is not just the subject but its environment as well, as mundane or ugly as it. Plus, the forms of the background can work with you in ways that take away the ugliness.
Its all up to the photographer really, no need to apply make up to the environment.