My latest book - ‘52 Assignments: Street Photography’

I was flattered to receive a call from my publisher late last year: ‘Can you write a new book?’, they said. ‘It’s a bit of a tight deadline’.

Well, that ‘phone call took care of the dark winter evenings and kept me out of mischief for several months. And those efforts have now borne fruit, with the publication of ’52 Assignments – Street Photography’ (Ammonite Press).

The book is a mission brief, a photographic workshop, a personalised journal and an anarchic guide to putting the creativity back into your photography. It is filled with prompts and projects, nudges and sparks, innovations and inspirations, to help you kick your photographic habits, step out of your comfort zone and add the creativity and character that is the essential feature of professional street photography. The book features 52 commissions and concepts with alternative ideas for composing, creating and printing eye-catching images from the street. You will discover different ways of approaching your subjects; challenges and games that add a level of mischief and play to your work; ideas for using maps, books and signs to unleash your creativity; lists of the best festivals and events to attend; prompts for alternative subjects and themes; guides to removing clichés from your work; radical techniques for pushing your camera beyond its limits or using alternative cameras; and examples from historic masters; along with ideas for innovative approaches to processing and printing.

If you have any sort of creative roadblock in your street photography, this is the book to drive you right through it. The rest of the journal’s pages are styled for you to add your own thoughts, notes, lists, Top 10s, technical specifications, quotes, and even sketches and doodles, creating a record of your own 52 photographic assignments. These may be completed weekend by weekend over the course of a year, or dipped into every time you need to bring a new concept or creative approach to your street photography.

If you’d like a signed copy, you can buy one directly from me - please just send me a message.

My first book, ‘Mastering Street Photography’, is available to purchase directly from me.

Street Photography in Prague

I’m writing this in the airport lounge, returning home after six days in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. It’s a city of almost magical sights, with gothic fairytale spires reaching for the blue sky and chocolate box architecture. But let’s get down to street level . . .

Prague is a city of contrasts: rich, poor, hippies, perpetual travellers, digital nomads and tourists. Oh, the tourists. I’ve just finished running a street photography workshop with a documentary theme, based on the impact of tourism on a once-beautiful city; the tourists were to become the stars of the weekend.

Walk around the Old Town and everywhere you look are cheap trinket shops, donut stalls, touts for guided walks, beer tasting marathons or pub crawls, scammers, gangs of men or women on a stag / hen night ‘mission’, rip-off foreign exchange kiosks and beggars. All this is not exactly ideal for the locals but if you’re a street photographer running a documentary project it could be your lucky day.

My trip started with a flight from Manchester. Whilst I’m not normally one to say no to a beer, I was slightly concerned to be the only sober passenger on this morning flight. The plane smelled like a brewery; the bawdiness had started, even before we left the tarmac. This was my first taste of the following six days in Prague, the stag capital of Europe. And this was a Wednesday morning - it wasn’t even the weekend.

Having spent Thursday finding my street photography feet and ‘reccying’, I had a one-to-one workshop with a lovely lady who is taking the first steps on her street photography journey. We went through some technical basics, explored three approaches to street photography - based on the moment, the narrative and the aesthetic - then hit the streets in some glorious sunshine.

I’d decided to take my Fujifilm x100F and XF10 cameras on this trip, giving me the flexibility to work between 18mm and 23mm (28 to 35mm in full-frame terms). I nearly always shoot wide on the streets, rarely going longer than 23mm, which gets me up-close and involved, ultimately bringing something extra to the image in the form of emotion, drama or energy. And, as the trip had a documentary flavour, the ‘real life’ perspective of the 23mm felt just about right.

My settings for street photography

The weekend workshop started with an hour-long briefing in the wonderfully eccentric Globe Bookstore & Cafe before setting off into the Old Town. The weather was so-so, dry but grey - a disappointment after the previous day’s glorious sunshine. Except in the case of dramatic change to the light, my settings remain pretty much the same: my maxim is ‘set it and forget it’. This usually means aperture priority mode, f/8 and auto-ISO (with a minimum shutter speed of 1/320 sec). I’m quite happy to let the ISO run as high as it likes - these cameras can handle it well. The small-ish aperture is a good compromise - it lets in a reasonable amount of light whilst giving me a decent depth-of-field (which is essential as I use zone focusing).

These settings help me get it right 98% of the time. Street photography is not about perfection, it’s about getting the shot, capturing the moment. That means I need to be able to work quickly and without thinking or worrying about what’s happening with the camera. It’s a pretty failsafe, tried and trusted formula.

Before I leave settings, it’s probably worth a quick shout-out for the ‘snapshot’ mode on the little XF10.  Press a button and the camera sets itself to manual focus (you can toggle to focus at either 2m or 5m) and the aperture resets to f/8 (at 2m) or f/5.6 (at 5m). I always go for the 2m option which, with this wide 18mm lens, gives me a massive operating zone, so I don’t ever have to think about focusing on the right part of the scene. It’s liberating.

In search of the moment

the first task for my five students was to learn to observe the ‘moment’. It’s that split second where something interesting, awkward, emotional, dramatic, peculiar or funny happens - and it’s what I consider to be at the heart of most good street photography. We spent half an hour in Staromestske Nameste, the Old Town Square, watching the tourists with their selfie sticks, their awkward poses, pints of beer and ironic bridal gowns. I could have spent the whole day there - you can’t fail to find ‘the moment’ in a place like that.

The street photography documentary project

All of this quest for the moment ran concurrently with our focus on the documentary project. To help the visualise how such a project might look, I asked the students to imagine opening a copy of, say, the National Geographic or Time magazine and seeing their images over 5-6 pages; what would those images look like? Would they be in monochrome or colour? How would they tell the story? How would they work together as a cohesive set? Pre-visualising an assignment in this way can help set some parameters - perhaps even the terms of reference for a project.

We spent the rest of the morning in the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, dodging a heavy shower over a beer and a goulash, before crossing the river to the quieter Maleo Strana district. Here we found lots of swans - great for more tourist madness - and a giant ‘beaver rat’. [Note: I’m writing this on the plane home and have just spotted a guy with a ‘Drink More’ T-shit and two black eyes] . 

Layers in street photography

In Kampa Park we found the David Czerny sculptures (large bronze babies with enormous bottoms) which was perfect for an exercise on how to construct an image using layers. This is an important street photography technique and I try to incorporate a similar exercise into all my workshops. Using layers - say three - to construct an image helps to add real volume and depth to the image and is a technique used exquisitely by Alex Webb (see his book, ‘The Suffering of Light’ for examples).

There were three of four of the ‘babies’, all on different planes which, with a smattering of tourists, helped us to experiment with building layers whilst generating more material for the documentary project.

The Charles Bridge, a thunderstorm and another rat

At 5am on a clear morning, the Charles Bridge is a go-to destination for photographers. At 4pm on a grey Saturday afternoon it amounts to tourist hell - but with some more potential for our documentary project. I took a picture (discreetly, I thought) of a guy with a white rat, who went berserk and demanded I delete the image (which of course I didn’t); he was starting to get a bit violent but when a couple of fellow workshoppers surrounded me he backed off (thanks Andy and Tobias!). Still, it was a lesson for everyone to stand your ground and reaffirm your belief that it’s not wrong or illegal to take pictures in a public place (though not in every public place - I’ll write a separate article about the legalities of street photography).

On Sunday we checked out the smaller of Prague’s two railway stations, the photogenic Karlin tunnel, the ‘JZP’ church and square and Zizkov’s controversial TV tower, before catching the metro to Wenceslas Square. The Prague metro is an interesting place for street photography, with its quirky backdrops and no shortage of interesting people. 

So, as a destination, Prague has lots to offer for street photographers, especially in good light. Travel light, be prepared to walk lots and make sure you use the metro and trams.

First views: the Fujifilm GFX 50R

I’ve been having fun recently with medium format, in the shape of the new(ish) Fujifilm GFX50R. Based on the same technology as the successful 50S, the 50R has the form of a rangefinder camera and is therefore more aligned to what street photographers expect. I used the camera on a recent trip to Venice and was blown away by the image quality and the amount of detail in the huge images.

Sure, it’s bulkier than your average digital camera but it’s really no bigger or heavier than a full-frame DSLR costing a similar amount. We often think of digital medium format cameras as being expensive but this camera puts 150mb files well within the reach of the serious amateur.

The image quality is just breathtaking, build quality is up there with the best, handling and ergonomics just ‘work’, it’s weather resistant and there’s a good range of superb glass available. What’s not to like? Well, from where I’m standing, not much: okay, there’s no 4k video, the AF is not the fastest and the burst mode is only 3fps. But does any of that really matter? No: street, documentary or travel photographers really shouldn’t be too troubled by any of this. It’s a superb camera which I’m finding hard to put down.

Street Photography with a Film Camera

Despite the explosive advances in digital technology, film is still with us and it has made a big comeback in recent years. Suddenly, people are interested in film once again and labs are dusting down their enlargers, community darkrooms are popping up and film sales are booming.

If you’re still in possession of a film camera, you’re in luck. If you’re not, they are in plentiful supply and you can find them for sale in car boot sales, in charity shops and on auction sites such as eBay. Whether it’s roll film or 35mm, colour or black & white it doesn’t matter. Just buy some of the stuff, load it up and shoot some street photography – you’ll be in for a real treat.

Here are 12 good reasons to shoot film:

1. Celebrate ‘slow art’! Shooting with film will really slow you down and think more about what you’re shooting; you will pay more attention to the composition and also to exposure and focusing.

2. Rather like learning theory in music, it will help you better understand the technical aspects of your camera.

3. If you shoot only using film, your images will take on a consistent look (film shooters tend to find one type of film they like and then stick with it). It will help you develop your own personal style.

4. If you really get into film and do your own developing and printing, your hobby takes on a whole new meaning and you learn a completely new skillset.

5. You won’t be chimping (reviewing shots on the LCD screen) all the time and will be able to concentrate on the ‘here and now’.

6. You will be more thoughtful when shooting – more conscious of your surroundings and more ‘in the zone’. You’ll also be more discerning about what to shoot and will become more self-critical.

7. You won’t obsess about gear as much as the simplicity of film shooting will act as a ‘digital detox’.

8. You will develop as a digital photographer as film shooting will make you think more critically about how you capture and process every single image.

9. If you don’t fancy having a darkroom, most labs will develop a film and send you an envelope with the negatives and also a CD with all the JPEGs – this takes you right back into the digital process.

10. Prints made from film have a ‘look’ that digital can’t seem to replicate.

11. It’s exciting: there is no instant gratification and the anticipation of waiting to see your a feeling like no other for the photographer.

12. Everyone will love you! Walk down the street with a huge DSLR round your neck and you’ll be public enemy number one. But when people see a film camera they’ll smile and start to reminisce. Old cameras make people happy.

Do give it a try. Get yourself an old camera and commit to using it exclusively for a month. Be highly disciplined and don’t be tempted to reach for anything digital until the month is over. You will almost certainly relish the experience, producing stylish images and growing as a photographer.

I'm now an 'Official Fujifilm X-Photographer' . . .

I’m very pleased to have been asked to become a brand ambassador for Fujifilm – an ‘Official Fujifilm X-Photographer’. You may know that I’ve been using Fujifilm gear for street photography for some years and rate it very highly; I’ll now be working more closely with the company to run workshops, to test equipment and to help the company with its product development.

But to make one thing clear: this does not mean I get free gear – nor does it mean I’ll be banging on about it relentlessly through every channel available. If you’re already a Fujifilm user, you’ll benefit from my access to the company for technical support, advice and updates; I’ll also be running some Fujifilm-specific workshops later this year. If you’re not a Fujifilm user, don’t worry – nothing changes! I warmly welcome users of any make or model of equipment on all my courses and workshops and everyone gets the same level of personal attention.