I would say that street photography is probably my favourite type of photography both to look at and to do. For me it's almost a kind of therapy for when I'm stressed or just not enjoying life so much. I live near the city and I often walk the city streets and when I have my camera I'm actively looking for the little details and scenes that might be interesting to capture in a photograph.
It's a great therapeutic exercise because, as well as exercising the creative part of your brain, you force yourself to notice more of the things around you and see them in a different way. You start to notice things that you might normally pass by without giving a second thought to, but when you see them you realise that it's rather an odd place to see a pair of discarded mirror sunglasses with one lens missing. Sometimes I even make up little stories in my head, imagining how these objects might have got there. For example, a bottle of Korean peach soju nestled at the bottom of a tree, as below....it seems like the start of a children's storybook !
Of course, as those from Hobart reading this will know, it's been raining a lot in Hobart in the last month, and the last week has been particularly grey and miserable. But I must admit that I am often one of those people who likes walking around in the rain, well, within reason. Of course, you've got to be a bit careful about getting rain on your camera, particularly the lens, but there are also many areas undercover around the city and rainy days can creates lots of interest, albeit you cannot expect great light. It's grey, it's gloomy, I say embrace that, but it can be also interesting to find those little points of contrast. Sometimes I look for particular colours and try and make them my theme, bright reds and yellows are good on grey day.
Other times I'm looking for different thing that illustrate the effect of the rainy day, that capture and mood of the day. Metallic objects such as bikes and park benches can be particularly good as rain drops form and glisten on them. Fogged up shop windows or puddles forming lakes and streams across footpaths. Cars creating spray as they surge along the rain-soaked city streets...
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