Why Is Street Photography So Hard To Do Right?

It’s a warm day in February (Saturday, Feb. 10) and the Toronto Film Shooters are off on what’s called Jo-Anne’s Pastry and Chocolate Trail Through The City That’s Jo-Anne with the bag next to Marion just right of center.

Note the wide variety of cameras from Leicas dating back to the 30s to twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras to Nikons and Canons and a few even I didn’t recognize.

With several pros and at least one with a Master of Fine Arts to his name and a bunch of talented amateur photographers the walk which literally took us from a hole-in-the wall donut shop you’d never find without a guide to a great lunch at C’est What Pub where the food was outstanding, the beer was amazing and the service was professional (this despite us not warning them that 20 hungry photographers were going to show up all at once). Highly recommended if you’re downtown on Front Street.

So what happened in between the donuts and the beer?

Why photography happened!

Lots of the photographers have posted images online and I’ve been developing Ilford HP-5 and scanning two rolls into the computer. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll get a gallery going at StreetShooters.ca and you can have a look for yourself.

Street photography and I mean good street photography is really hard to get right. You’ll see what I mean when I post my scanned images. None of this is Cartier-Bresson level by any means but the only way to get better at street photography is go shoot images while walking around.

You can walk around anywhere. You don’t have to wait to visit New York City (although that would be nice) or Toronto or Hamilton or anywhere really. You can start on your own street in your own home town. Just start walking and take your camera with you.