Why do we “Street”?
That’s right, I’m using street as a verb.
I’ve just had my coffee. A £28 bag of beans from Colombia. No cocaine in that bag either. It really did cost twenty-eight pounds.
This isn’t the blog equivalent of a gym selfie: “Look at me with my expensive coffee.” It’s more about asking the question: what sort of person spends that much on coffee? What kind of person takes photos of strangers on the street?
Both me.
As I’m grinding those coffee beans, what used to be fun, and a rare thing, is now a tricky gamble.
Spending that much on coffee used to be a guarantee of tasting something mind-blowing and rare. Now it’s almost a standard price, and you really don’t know what you’re going to get. The trends and dogma of the posh coffee market have determined that people have been drinking this crazy shit for so long that they’ve forgotten what it should taste like.
Having been around the gambling industry on and off for a long time, I can recognise this behaviour. This coffee could be shit, and I know it. That’s why I can feel the butterflies. I’ve bet £28 it won’t be.
This time, it pays off. It’s a good cup.
I find being on the street these days to be a bit like gambling in its own way. You’re gambling your own free time for the chance to capture something transcendental.
It’s time that could be spent doing any number of things: making money, chasing sex, drugs, alcohol, or just having a good time with friends or a partner.
Why walk around solo in a city you know like the back of your hand, trying to take photos of random people?
The irony is that most of the photos you take, even the reasonably good ones, don’t really impress most people. A lot of these photos probably won’t come into their own for another 25 years or so.
The chance of getting a crossover photo that blows away people who haven’t even heard of street photography is vanishingly small. Maybe it is just a gamble after all.
I went into town to work on Friday. I always take my camera. After work, I bumped into some friends and went for a drink outside the Academy, where Simon was taking some photos of a gig.
Pretty much out of nowhere, a load of people got together and started line dancing a few tables down from us in the courtyard. Unexpected.
Anyway, I went and took a few photos. Nothing really for the portfolio, but that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing better for the street photographer than seeing something different. That’s what a lot of us are looking for.
You can miss shots, and they don’t even have to be great. If you’re experienced, you know that even with a great scene, there’s luck involved. That’s what it’s all about. We’re looking for magic.
You don’t often see it outside Primark or a student union, hours before showtime. But sometimes you do.
Keep gambling.
