My 8 favourite street photographs of the past 8 months

Street photography is like hunting. Words coming from a person who has never hunted in his life, but still, it feels like hunting. Most of the time you are just walking and looking. Looking for the person, the sign or the composition that catches your attention. Then you have to compile all your knowledge, skills and experience to frame, focus, wait for the right moment and shoot. Sometimes that happens in a split second.

Street photography can be really frustrating. You can walk for a few hours and get nothing. Nothing catches your attention, nothing grabs your eye. But you just have to accept it as a part of the game. Like hunters, I would imagine. :) I did learn to enjoy the process. I like walking the streets of Ljubljana, so even if I don’t get any interesting shots, I still enjoy strolling, people-watching and getting those steps in. But of course, my motivation to go out and shoot fluctuates. Sometimes, I would go out 3-4 times a week and then I would not shoot for months or even years.

I could roughly divide my style of hunting in two types: Option one would be a type where I am looking for a story, usually combining two or more elements in a frame to create a dialogue between subjects. Here, the story is usually more important than composition. Oftentimes, for these type of photos, I have to react quickly. I also like some humour or irony in the frames that gets transmitted to the viewer.

The other type would be trying to create a compositionally well established image that shows a piece of the world, often unseen by the public. By the unseen I don’t mean the interior of a bank vault or a morgue, but more a moment that happens just then and there and I get the chance to capture it forever. Here, I focus a lot on the composition and carefully examine all elements in a frame. Often I wait for the right subject to come in the right place and fulfil my frame.

If I manage to compile composition, story and emotion, I consider that a win. To do that multiple times, it takes time and effort.

Below are some of my favourite street photos from recent months.

This picture is a good example of why sometimes a little bit of patience goes a long way. I waited here for about a minute for the right subject to come by, someone who could compliment the tree on the left. And she did. Thank you, lady in white. :)

I like commercial signs, because they invite me to create something with them. They challenge me to combine them with a subject from the environment. Here, I was already getting ready to shoot the big face on the bus, in case something interesting happened in the foreground. It did. Although, the lady could have looked a bit more to her right and higher to make this shot really nice.

Another image on the Prešernov trg (main square in Ljubljana), this time three subjects with the same pose. If I had to name the photo, I would call it Zeitgeist. The disconnection between people is also one of the main themes I am exploring in my ongoing street photography project about different generations. This image surely fits the theme.

Although I mostly shoot B&W film, here I just ran out of film in the camera and saw this family with (almost) matching jackets. I quickly switched to my digital Fuji X100s to grab this frame, as the three of them were walking towards the three umbrellas with the same color as their jackets. Composition of this image is not great, but it is an example of an image, where the focus is elsewhere. For sure, I would like the image even more if the composition was better.

Second and last digital image of this blog is a simple observation of the environment. A game of connecting the dots. A dialogue between lines. Though I must add that I must have looked weird or very inappropriate crouching behind this woman with a camera in my hands. :)

At the moment this is my favourite street photograph I have taken. The composition, the interaction and the funny side of the image really work well. Also, I think this photo is a bit different, a bit out of the ordinary and I like it. The way the woman looks to her dog and the way those leashes really match almost perfectly, you just can’t make that up. I must admit that the original is a bit wider, but this photo really jumped to another level, when I cropped it correctly.

Another observation and playing with street signs/commercials. I saw how this man’s face matched the face on the commercial behind him, quickly made a photo and then went closer for an even better angle.

This is another compositionally interesting image I made while making another project in Žale, Slovenia’s biggest cemetery. I often really like street images that almost feel like a graphic design with geometrical shapes, lines and surfaces.

And here are a few more images from the past months I would say are keepers, but are not my favourites.

If you made it to the end of this blog, thank you for taking the time to look at some of my non-commercial work. I appreciate it. I have been back to street photography on and off for the past months and it feels weird, but also nice, to put my images out in the world. Yes, I do shoot for myself, but it is still nice to share some of the work. If you feel like it, you can leave a comment on my pictures (good or bad), my writing, blog in general, start an interesting conversation or just tell me your favourite type of ice cream if you wish so. You can also do that anonymously. :)