I’ve been feeling for a while now that something has been lacking from my street photography. I seem to have settled into a “style” or “way of seeing” that features themes of solitude and isolation, monotone color palettes, and generally bland scenes – in line with my descriptions of “New-Wave Street Photography”.
Like its predecessors, the Fuji X100 and Fuji XT, the Fuji GFX 50R is a marvel of engineering, ergonomics, size, image quality, and price.
As a street photographer, I accept that I have a bias towards the kind of work and criticisms I prefer to seek out as an audience to the work of others - although there are examples of landscape or portraiture that I do enjoy it is street photography and photojournalism that take up the majority of my interest.
For a while now I have been working on establishing myself as a street photography educator by leading lessons and workshops throughout London, focusing on documenting human behavior and emotion rather than more new-wave techniques involving light-architecture and intricate technical compositions.
I see a lot of articles across the Internet claiming to know the "rules to follow" or the "things to avoid" in street photography, easily one of the most hotly debated genres. What they tend to misunderstand is just how little the genre cares for photographic rules, and what the defining elements of street photography really are that go beyond any of the purely photographic elements.
Street photography is hard to do well. Really hard. Even if you are great, most of your shots will not be.
Photographs are as much about what is not included as the subjects in the frame. Being aware of the things I avoid is as helpful to me as the things I gravitate towards when it comes to composing an image.
I’m not sure on what day I realized that my street photography work had become overly homogeneous, and sometimes asinine. “Oh look, a red car and a red shirt. click.” I’d been in love with the look of Fujifilm’s Classic Chrome (based off of Kodak Kodachrome) and had begun to shoot a lot of color for color’s sake.
Sometimes one of the best things I can do for my photography, specifically for improving my compositions, is to put my camera down and walk around without taking photographs.
One of my images has been subjected to criticism and scrutiny in a way that none of my other work ever has. The photograph in question is of a scene in London, Chinatown; a man reaches into a sewer while shouting about how someone threw his needles down there.
One of the questions I am asked most frequently is “how do you make money from street photography?” So far, aside from print sales and teaching courses, the answer has been that I approach street photography as a form of “practice” -- a space in which I can experiment with new techniques, work on my style, and rehearse different fast-paced scenarios.
I've been using some version of "street" photography as practice and exercise for all areas of my photography since I started taking it seriously in 2015, but I've never been as focused and regimented about honing my approach to street photography every day as I have been since the start of 2018, when I decided to give myself an entire year to "make it" as a photographer.
If you're easily grossed out, you might want to close this story now. It's about one of the most viral and popular street photos that was shared on the Internet this month, and it's definitely an... unusual one.
Alan Burles started as a art director in the early 1980s. After investing in a Olympus XA 35mm rangefinder, however, Burles started traveling everywhere with a pocket camera. Since 2005, he has been a full-time photographer, and his street photos are filled with clever illusions.
Here's a thought-provoking 9-minute video by UK photographer Jamie Windsor regarding the ethics of street photography.
Heads up: if you enjoy watching documentaries about photographers and photography, there's a great one that's now free. Cheryl Dunn's highly-regarded 2013 documentary Everybody Street is now free-to-watch on YouTube with ads. You can watch the 1.5-hour film above.
Here's my favorite quote from Jay Maisel, one of the legends in the world of photography: "If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person." As photographers, we often get bored in the place we live and we want to travel as much as possible to get different and more interesting pictures.
I went on a photo walk the other day with a friend who mostly shoots events and does client-focused work. The majority of the time we just talked about freelance work, but every now and then we’d see an interesting scene and capture it. We both shot on zoom lenses, but when she would show me her captures, I couldn’t help but notice how zoomed in she was.
Ricoh has announced the development of the highly-anticipated GR III high-end digital compact camera. It's designed to be "the ultimate street photography camera."
I was interviewed by street photographer Eric Kim back in 2016, and it was a huge deal for me! I remember when I first started shooting street, his blog was one of the first that I came by.
Since the availability of Phase One's new 150-megapixel system hardware, the prices on lesser equipment have fallen surprisingly. I was therefore able, recently, to purchase a lightly used Hasselblad H6D-100c, with a couple of lenses, at a relative steal.
Imagine, you’re partaking in Pedestrian Sunday at Kensington Market on a sunny summer afternoon in Toronto, Canada, walking around with your Fuji X100F in hand looking for that Cartier-Bresson “decisive moment.” Suddenly you see a child leaning against a dilapidated, graffiti-splashed wall the likes of which would make Banksy nod in approval.
This is a tale of friendship, family, photography, and travel. Forgive me if I stray from the narrative of cameras and the like, but photography does not exist on an island. My claim to have captured the Highest Street Photo in the World admittedly relies on a relatively restrictive definition of what this genre entails. However, I will leave the nit-picking of definitions to others.
Jeff Mermelstein’s photographic practice of making presumably private text conversations public by photographing people’s phones while they are texting and then posting the results on Instagram has made a splash recently. Of course the highlight that ran in Business Insider was framed as a question in a PetaPixel article: is Mermelstein’s practice ethically sound?
This week Business Insider ran a story that covered images taken by a street photographer of people’s private phone messages. That photographer was the highly respected Jeff Mermelstein, someone who has a long list of celebrated work.
"The Sound of Silence" is a series by Chilean street photographer Eduardo Asenjo Matus, who uses long exposures to show people in flow of the city.
As a street photographer, I like catching those quiet moments of solitude people have amidst the busy and hectic life of the metropolis. That's how my Daydreamers series was born. While combing through my archives and Instagram posts, I noticed I had a lot of photos of people with their eyes shut.
A man in Pennsylvania is under police investigation this week. His offense: being a stranger and taking pictures of a kid in a Starbucks.
Kai Wong recently got together with street photographers Joshua K Jackson and Craig Whitehead (a.k.a. SixStreetUnder) to make this helpful 10.5-minute tips video containing 10 nuggets of wisdom for upping your street photography game.
I fell in love with Japan. Deeply. The culture, the clean streets, the friendly and respectful people and the full spectrum of experience that it offers. From high rise cities to quaint, beautiful gardens and temples. All within walking distance of each other.