To kick off my blog series I thought I’d explain why I got into street photography in the first place. Looking back, there were a couple of situations and thoughts that came together and spat me out a street photographer.
Millions of people the world over, actually love street photography but don’t realise it. These people might share on social media, black and white images from their home cities, from a century ago or share a faded, bleached, colour image of kids outside on their bikes, jumping over their smiling yet petrified friends. To show how kids rolled in the ’70s and ’80s.
The images made today are the equivalent of these glimpses into the past. That’s the primary reason I find street and urban photography so interesting.
I’ve been taking street photos for around three years, but I should have started around 17 years ago. That’s how long I’ve been living in Istanbul. The city is a great place to live and a fantastic place for street photography.
I can remember saying to myself and others, throughout the years “I wish I had a camera on me”. So many surreal things happen on the street, and I would love to have captured them…. unfortunately those moments have passed.
For example, I remember looking down on İstiklal Caddesi (the main shopping street in Istanbul) from a pub balcony. The road was packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists and shoppers, apart from an old man with a 2-meter gap around him. He was sauntering down the street with lots of space to himself, I then realised why he had a 2-meter gap around him.
Walking next to him was the largest and most obedient Ram I had ever seen. This Ram was better trained than most dogs and it wasn’t on a lead, it just walked by his side, down this packed shopping street. The scene was bazaar and was a fantastic photo opportunity lost.
I’ve had many of these “wish I had a camera with me” moments, as I’m sure many other people have. Unfortunately, it took me years to do something about it.
I remember in 2005, I visited the Istanbul modern art gallery, at the end of my visit I went to the gift shop and bought a book. The book was called, Appearances as we see them. It has many black and white images from old Istanbul and further afield in Turkey. I found the photos fascinating, and like many people viewing these kinds of pictures, I would wonder what it was like to be around in those days. Looking at the images in the book it’s fun to see places that I walk past daily, as they were in years gone by.
After a short while, this book took its place on a bookshelf and was not thought about or looked at again until last year when I was a couple of years into my street photography journey. Realising that I had bought a book full of old street photography years before was frustrating as a lot of years were wasted. I wish the penny had of dropped way back then.
The other major situation, that started me on this path, was when I wanted to buy a new camera. I wanted to replace my very outdated and hardly ever used, 5 megapixel DSLR.
Trawling the internet and going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, I decided on the camera I wanted. During this research, I started seeing lots of information on mirrorless cameras…smaller, lighter, better for street photography. Now, this may or may not be true, but it had my interest. I finally thought to myself, street photography is actually its own genre. Once this was planted, my time was taken up, looking at cameras AND street photography. The plan was set. “I’m going to buy a new camera and try street photography”.
The book that should have kick started my street photography journey.