Street Photography

 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.