I Don’t Want Your Obvious Street Photography

Even when I lived in London, I deliberately avoided big events like Pride, Notting Hill Carnival and the various festivals, parades and spectacles that filled the city.

Not because they weren’t interesting.

They were.

But because I knew exactly what would happen. There’d be a load of street photographers there, all falling over each other to photograph the same colourful costumes, flamboyant characters, crowds and moments of chaos.

One person takes the shot. Everyone else takes their version of it. It’s all so predictable; boring even.

And that’s never really been street photography to me.

I’ve never been particularly interested in photographing the obvious. Or the ‘expected’.

If everyone can immediately see the photograph, I’m usually looking somewhere else. I want the photograph that makes you stop and think, “how the hell did he notice that?”

The strange little interaction happening behind the main event. A completely unexpected juxtaposition. Something ordinary that suddenly becomes extraordinary for half a second. Something out of context of the main event.

For me, that’s where street photography actually exists.

It’s about observation. Anticipation. Curiosity. Not the bleedin’ obvious.

And sometimes, deliberately looking in the opposite direction to everyone else (or even just not turning up!)

You don’t need a huge event, thousands of people or something spectacular happening in front of you. You just need to see something other people don’t.

Because if fifty photographers are all standing in the same place photographing the same thing, I’m probably going to walk around the corner.

So here’s the challenge:

Next time you’re out with your camera, don’t photograph the thing everyone else is photographing. Don’t photograph the obvious or what you expect to be happening there.

Walk past it.

Turn around.

Look behind you.

Look at the people who aren’t part of the spectacle.

Look at the boring bit.

Look at the thing that seems completely irrelevant.

And if you come home with a photograph that nobody else could have taken simply because nobody else noticed it was there, then perhaps you’ve started to understand what street photography is really about.

Don’t just photograph what’s in front of you. Learn to see what’s being missed.