A late afternoon visit to the city and an unexpected opportunity to take a quick photo walk, this is why you should have a camera with you as often as possible.

This was also another opportunity to become more familiar with my new Fujifilm X-T5, coupled with my pre-existing 23mm f2 lens which makes for a great street photography kit.

The streets weren’t exactly bustling at this time of the day, and to be fair I’m in a transition phase right now regarding my photographic perspectives, and what I believe to be interesting enough photographs.

I am challenging myself more than ever to resist taking what I consider to be standard street photographs, and focus more on trying to create more depth, and hopefully stories with them.

Now, I honestly believe that some of these photographs can be considered to be standard street ones, and I struggled with them whilst editing, however I also believe that sometimes standard photographs can play a role in telling an overall story, particularly when writing blogs such as this one.

For example, the following photographs are what I consider to be standard, and I would have preferred to have more depth and story in them, however when you look at them as part of the complete set of photographs I believe that they can play their role, because they help to display the character of the location.

Every now and again you will have an opportunity to discover quirky photographic opportunities like this one below.

Whenever I am in locations where not much is going on I look for interesting perspectives such as shooting through glass or telephone boxes, as often they will have textures, stickers, graffiti etc on them which provide an interesting view with subjects in the background out of focus.

One of the ways to help create depth in street photographs is to take pictures of people around you and incorporate the background. The background, motion and/or character of the people help to tell the story of the location that you are in.

And of course, when you find yourself staring into alleyways you should always go deeper to see if anything interesting can be found, just like this door sign.

Time was almost up for this short photo walk, however I never put my camera away until I’m back at the car or on a train.

That’s a good thing because I found myself in front of this iconic mural and decided to take a photograph with the motorbike in the foreground, just to help create a sense of scale and depth.

Often I will prefer to shoot through trees like this to add more texture to the photograph.

As I approached the parking station there was one final opportunity, because there was a light rail stop right outside with many commuters on hand.

I managed to grab this photograph as the tram was leaving the platform, agonisingly close to the person in the foreground. This one works for me because of the slow shutter speed enhancing the appearance of the tram, the commuter calmly standing right near the moving tram, and also the reflections in the tram windows.

As you can see there are various ways to create photographs even on a very short photo walk, however it won’t happen if you’re not prepared to take a camera with you.

Thank you for reading the blog, and I hope that you enjoyed the images.

Roger Brooks.