Street photography

Taking your time to watch where light falls in a scene is one of the best skills any budding photographer can have, and that’s what initially drew me to this image. The light that’s sculpting the figures towards the middle of the image creates wonderful subtle silhouettes on the men in the centre. If I’d been there I’d have run to where that light was falling in the scene and tried to use it to create some wonderful strong silhouettes. Get closer and use that light!

Wonderful use of colour, great understanding of scene and a fantastic eye for an image. It’s one of those images that gives a little bit more each time you look at it. The reflections on the floor add another layer of complexity and make for a special sunset shot. It shows that even sunsets, which everybody loves to shoot, can be really interesting with a bit of thought. If I had one minor niggle, I would want to remove the dark space in the top right corner

A grainy poetic image with a great sense of balance and symmetry. The bold columns of the building in the background instantly add a sense of intrigue and mystery. The matching umbrellas of the crowd in the foreground mixed with the slower shutter speed add a great sense of depth to the shot.

Timing, reading of scene and humour are all at play in this image. I love the feet of the guy jumping over the top of the static man. Juxtaposing things together that wouldn’t normally go together is what all good street photographers try to do. And although it’s pretty simple here, I like it for that reason.

A stolen moment from an intense female character draws me into this image. I love strong characters in my photography, and for me this image asks a multitude of questions. Is she dining alone? Why is she so serious? It’s that intrigue along with the lovely “salty” grain that makes this shot a winner. One slight improvement might have been to wait for the character in the right of the frame to move out of shot.

Stark, dark and empty. Graphically a really strong image with great use of exposure to capture the main subject in the light without being burned out. The downside of that is that the rest of the image is really dark, but in this instance it works to set the tone of the image.

Using really wide lenses in street photography allows you to get closer to the action and get a sense of what it’s like to be in the image. In this shot the photographer has perfectly exposed the outside while retaining some highlights on the character to the right of the frame. It’s a good travelling shot that has some intrigue, but I’d have liked the photographer to remove the distortion in post-processing and possibly get a little closer to the subject.

Being able to react quickly on the street is one of the main tricks a photographer can have. I’ve been trying to work out how this shadow actually works, but it’s that peculiar surreal feel against the plain pebble-dashed wall that interests me. I like the fact that the photographer is in the scene too, which sometimes doesn’t work, but in this instance really adds another character to the scene.