Shooting Your Home Town

The magic of the unexpected

Tomorrow (Saturday March 29) rain or shine we’re holding a photo walk in Oakville, Ontario. The walk is mainly for the photographers from the Oakville Camera Club but I suspect a few more friends may show up.

Street photography is one of the hardest forms of photography in my opinion because it’s not about the street or the things or even the people in the frame. No, street photography is all about the photographer and how they related to the place they were shooting.

So Saturday, for most of the. photographers, this place is called home.

Shooting street photography in a place you know so very well is dramatically more difficult than shooting street photography in one of the well-known street cities like New York City or Amsterdam.

I was in Amsterdam this fall on vacation and trust me there is no end of interesting things to shoot in Amsterdam.

But here is a video by street photographer Julie Hrudova about her struggles to find meaningful images in her home town of…Amsterdam LOL.

So tomorrow I am going to invite the photographers to allow themselves the opportunity to move slowly through their familiar streets and not look so hard for photos but let photo opportunities make themselves known to the photographer.

This type of photography can result in a lot of contemplation and slow walking and maybe fewer photos taken but as Julie shows us in her video magic and wonder can happen even at home.