The Only Rule In Street Photography

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Street photography is hard. It challenges our observational skills, our sense of vulnerability and our ability to react at a moment’s notice, which is why it can be so rewarding to finally capture something that others may have never noticed and to walk away with work that can hopefully stand the test of time and be remembered.

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Photo Vol. 125

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August is cold, well for a Queenslander anyway. I have my Leica M7 back now (about half way through this post) and it's working beautifully. You don't realise the effect a camera has on your shooting style until you are forced to use another, in this case a loud Nikon SLR. In the mean time, I've received my first large format lens, the Nikon 135mm f/5.6 in mint working condition. Still some weeks left before I can expect the Intrepid 4x5.

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On Documenting Street & Life

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From my perspective, to be a street photographer is to be human and to seek out humanity, the absurdity of it, the chaos of it, the irony, the elation, the fleeting and the ever present, from a man smiling with me in Kyoto while busking, to a little girl in the act of throwing a ball in a backyard, to the tale of two bins taking on an anthropomorphised relationship.

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Black & White Vol. 105

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I haven't touched my digital cameras in a while. TRI-X is bizarre and great and full of sand-like grain and I love it. My binder of negatives is growing, but I'm finding that some genres of photography I practice are better suited to high resolution colour raw files, so I've decided to pick up my Leica M again and use that for colour work where appropriate.

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Five Techniques I Use To Shoot Less

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I used to shoot extra frames just to make sure I was executing it right and getting the results, but over time I learnt to use other techniques to make my photographs in my head before I've even taken a single frame. I wouldn't have it any other way and have been applying it to my professional work.

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Black & White Vol. 101

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Now that I'm writing a lot more than simple photo posts, I decided to change the black and white street and documentary into a "volume" series so it could sit alongside my essays and other articles in a more discrete fashion. I started at 101 because there's already so much of this in the blog history!

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Mid-August Street Phoblography

This weekend has been full of street photography in the sunlit weather. I must admit, I've felt a little bit purposeless beyond just topping up the "body of work", but I've got some interesting pictures to choose from at any rate. At the end of the year, I'm thinking of printing contact sheets of all my B&W street photography to start selecting for a photo book, even if its just for myself and a few others

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People Looking At Things

Bit of random day in the city (again) shooting with Rocky's Summilux 35mm (again). It's a curious thing, this depth of field tool we have as photographers. As someone who uses a rangefinder with an separate optical view finder, I've tried not to rely on having shallow depth of field, but as I add the razor thin focus of the Summilux to toolbox again, I find its effect to have resonated with how I want photographs to portray their subject matter.

I think I'll have to go back to my own Summarit f/2.5 to recalibrate myself and figure out if I really would prefer to have the separation that is only possible at the wide aperture.

Day With The Summilux

Rocky was kind enough to lend me his Leica Summilux 35mm f/1.4 lens instead of my Summarit f/2.5. I've really forgotten what it's like to shoot environmental portraits with such shallow and dreamy depth of field. I actually really missed it to be honest and may end up with one in the future to replace my Summarit.

Street Pictures & A Protest Rally

The usual... Breakfast with Simon, Rocky and Aaron from the West End Camera Club then wandered into the city for some street photography, writing and catching up with folks. There was a protest rally on to fight for the rights of the asylum seekers and refugees over on Nauru.

I also took my Mamiya 7 out to shoot a roll of Kodak Portra 160 on for the first time.