Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Street
As a companion to the recently published Issue 36 of Street Photo Diary, I also shot another episode of the companion video series of the same name. It’s hard to believe that I’ve done ten of these now, and when I look back, they’ve really come a long way since my first attempts. In this episode I go searching for the winter light in Dublin city with my Fuji X-Pro 2 as my main camera.
Having repaired the detached mirror on my original Canon 5D I headed out onto the streets of Dublin city to do some street photography and test out the newly repaired camera.
As much as I love shooting street photography, I often find myself wondering about the ethics of it. I generally shoot candid street photography, as I believe that this is a more representative form of the art, in my opinion. While there’s nothing wrong with taking photos of people in public, at least according to the law, I do sometimes question if it’s right or not.
I set myself a little project the other morning, and that was to venture around the streets of Dublin city looking for interesting colours I could see. It’s become something of a running gag now, that my “Street Photography” isn’t technically street photography. But then, the definition of street photography is so vague anyway, at this point it doesn’t really matter. It was an interesting exercise, and it was quite revealing to me.
Lately, I’ve been getting a few emails from readers asking about the Sony A6000. In particular, people are interested in using the camera for street photography. I’ve shot street photos a lot with the A6000, and it’s one of my favourite cameras for street shooting. However, as I hadn’t shot this genre with it for a little while I thought I’d take it out for a spin, and record the proceedings as an episode of “Street Photo Diary.”
I was passing through a very sunny London city twice over the last week. On each occasion, I was only there for a day or so, and so I didn’t have a lot of time for photography, but I still managed to squeeze an hour or two in on both trips. I hadn’t really intended to shoot street photography specifically, but it sort of ended up that way. I was originally planning to do more “travel photography” style shots, and I was also shooting a video for my new travel vlog series, but in the process of trying to avoid the typical shots of London everyone takes, I somehow ended up shooting street photography. I was actually really lucky with some of the shots too.
For the latest episode of my ongoing “Street Photo Diary” series, I decided to set myself a little challenge and use one of my older cameras: a Canon 5D Mark1. The original Canon 5D, was the first consumer level full frame camera, and despite getting old, I can still get some good results from it.
It was a lovely sunny day in Dublin the other day, and it was surprisingly warm after a long cold spell. I grabbed my cameras and headed out to do some street and cityscape photography in the city. As well as trying to get some new street photography, I also wanted to shoot another episode of “Street Photo Diary”
They say the best way to learn is by making mistakes. Well, if that’s true, then I learned a lot making this video. I was in two minds whether to even share it or not, but in the end I was convinced to put it up, regardless. The video itself isn’t too bad, but I made some mistakes when shooting that I’m kind of embarrassed about. So here’s what happened…
It’s been something of an odd January here in Ireland. For a start, it’s been pretty bloody dark. It has’t exactly been the ideal environment to go out an take photos. Being sick didn’t help either. I had just been thinking to myself I hadn’t really shot any street photography recently, and then, as if by magic, the opportunity presented itself, so off I went.
Last week in Dublin a major engineering project was finished. The “Luas” cross-city tram project was finally completed. When the tram network was originally built there were two lines, which severed different parts of the city, but they weren’t connected, and there was no way to cross the city on the tram. Recently the city undertook a major civil engineering project to join the two lines. Over the past four years, I've been documenting the construction progress.
For a while now, I’ve been running a series of posts here on this blog called “Street Photo Diary”. I’ve also been practicing and testing various setups to allow me to produce “Vlog” style videos. After much testing and messing up, I have finally come up with a reasonable setup and idea, and that is to make a video version of my “Street Photo Diary” series. And so, a new monthly (for now) video series is born, also called “Street Photo Diary” !
Sometimes I just like to go for a walk with my camera, without intent or purpose. Just to see what one can see. This was one of those days. I set out with my Sony A6000 and Sigma 30mm lens. I didn’t really have any goals in mind. I just wanted to go for a walk and hopefully find some nice images.
Last week I posted the latest issue of my on-going Street Photo Diary series to my PhotoJournal blog. I had taken those shots in a single session and I felt that they worked well together as a set, however, I have a few more images that I took recently too. They didn’t really fit into the narrative that I was going with, so I thought that I would share them here in a separate post, with a bit more info on how I shot them.
I’ve said on my blog many times that Autumn is my favourite time of the year for photography. This isn’t just about the wonderful colours of the falling leaves. It’s also abut the Autumn light, and here in Ireland it’s already starting to be noticeable. In this issue of my on-going street photo diary series, I look at images shot on a sunny Autumn day in Dublin city, taken with a Fuji X-Pro 2 and 18-55mm lens.
I recently headed out to shoot some street photography on film, for my Street Photo Diary project, and I decided that it might make an interesting video. So, before I got started, I mounted my trusty GoPro on my cameras hot shoe, set it recording, and headed out onto the streets of Dublin to get some shots.
It’s been little while since I’ve posted a Street Photo Diary, and for this issue, I’m doing things a little differently. I’ve been shooting some film recently, and I also found some undeveloped film that I shot back at the start of the year, which also turned out to be some street shots.
With all the fuss recently about the Sony A9 and its electronic shutter, I thought I would try out the one on my X-Pro 2. I had dabbled with it before, but I always thought it was a bit of an odd experience, so I didn’t really do much with it. I had also read various reports of it introducing rolling shutter effects, so I hadn’t payed it much attention. However, I was out doing some street photography the other day, and so I thought that I might as well give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.
