In autumn, office workers are having a lunch break in the Sydney CBD. I like the yellow colour palette, giant Corinthian columns. I can see the play, to other eyes it may look like a banal reality.
It was a mid afternoon in the northern part of the city where the sun escapes through gaps between long shades of buildings pouring its light on odd corners.
This man, an ordinary office worker, with a plastic bag carrying his late lunch suddenly moved to a sunny spot just for few seconds. It appeared as if his ordinary plastic bag was a lantern of some sort absorbing and reflecting a pack of light. I wouldn’t call him a messiah but suddenly he no longer appeared as ordinary.
Do not afraid of capturing images of ordinary scenes. In fact good photography most often than not is about creating extraordinary out of ordinary.
What is Street Photography?
Street photography, a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place. The very publicness of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. - Google -
This is a pretty accurate description. Yet street photographers can stretch these boundaries a bit.
For me a picture taken on a public setting does not have to have people in it but it must have a meaningful story to tell from photographer’s point of view.
Take this picture as an example.
On the surface it is an ordinary picture. In the background a liner docked in the Sydney Harbour, and in the front the roof of the oldest cottage the colonists built two centuries ago.
There is a deeper story than what it tells me. The humans are not visible but trapped in their little compartments in the liner. Just like the tiles on the roof their collective story is what unifies them. They may have individual stories and lives. But from this distance they lost their individuality. Their story is about a journey, today made under favourable circumstances, but two hundred odd years ago as convicts transported inhumanly under the deck of a ship.
From distant climes, o'er wide-spread seas, we come,
Though not with much éclat or beat of drum,
True patriots all: for, be it understood:
We left our country for our country's good.
George Barrington - an Irish pickpocket, a First Fleet convict.
I have been experimenting street photography with iPhone camera recently.
The phone camera is so ubiquitous that it became the most recognised object of modern life. People got used to it as an accessory. Hardly anyone pays attention to you when you take pictures with it. This makes it a potent tool to solve the most pressing problem for street photographers; proximity to subject.
If it's not good enough, you're not close enough - Robert Capa
I noticed this family was walking in front of me in the George Street. Before then I had never seen someone riding on an electric suitcase. Two elders were riding on their suitcases, their children and a grandchild were walking beside them. Interestingly men had identical shirts like a ceremonial uniform.
There was something in their unity that touched me. The grandchild with a jacket with oversized sleeves was giving a helping hand to his grandad, while the young man in the front was looking back, checking on them. It was the decisive moment. I approached, framed the picture and shoot.
