Something Different: Street Photography

 I've really enjoyed getting into street photography in the last couple of months, and while this is a bit of a shift for a blog post topic for me, I've realized taking candid photos of people is really just the art of capturing urban wildlife! Many of the same techniques come into play; you have to be patient, do lots of exploring, train your eye to look for things other people miss, and in general just be ready for whatever might be around the next corner! I'll continue to focus on wildlife here, but if you want to follow more of my street photography, you can follow my page on 500px.

A friend recently lent me the book Street Photography Now, which has great essays and over 300 photos by world-famous street photographers. Some quotes in the book particularly stood out to me, and captured what street photography is starting to mean to me. I've interspersed them below with some of my favorite photos I've taken over the last few months. All these photos were taken with my Ricoh GR IV.

"At a time when staged narratives and rendered images are popular, I am excited by the fact that life itself offers situations far more strange and beautiful than anything I could set up." - Melanie Einzig

"Above all, street photography communicates empathy. It shows the elegance, and the occasional absurdities, which inhabit the lives of ordinary people." - David Gibson 

"Photographing in public keeps me awake and aware, always looking around, in awe at what we humans are up to." - Melanie Einzig

"To see the complexity of life on the street is for me a kind of meditation." -Sigfried Hansen

"Street photography is like gambling. You get lucky or you get nothing." - Markus Hartel

 "Street photographers never switch off. You have to be constantly on the lookout for the unreal moment in the everyday." - Jesse Marlow

"I believe that the photographer's job is to cut a frame-sized slice out of the world around him, so faithfully and honestly that if he were to put it back, life and the world would begin to move again without a stumble." - Raghu Rai

"My personal pictures don't have to 'do' anything. They don't have to sell in a gallery or sit well beside the ads in a magazine. I don't have to make pictures that are easily categorized. They are not reportage. They are just pictures about life." - Nick Turpin 

"I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner." - Alex Webb