I haven’t done many (if any) reviews for camera equipment on this site yet, neither have I done any reviews on things linked to photography, but I’ve been doing more reading about photography recently and I thought it would be good to share some of my thoughts on some of my recent purchases. This is the first of more to come.
I’ve been interested in Street Photography for a little while now. It’s a big change from the interests I had in wildlife photography but, for me at least, is far more accessible and it doesn’t need expensive specialist camera equipment. I’m still very much in the learning stage and don’t confess to be an expert in it by any means so one of the things I decided to do was read more about it.
Street Photography Now by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren is a book that has received many good reviews already on amazon.co.uk, which is always a good sign, and it contains photographs and contributions by many of todays respected street photographers. I thought this would be a good start and give me a broad view of what street photography is.
The book is big, a good ‘coffee table’ sized paperback book with almost 250 pages. The book is broken down into several chapters but throughout the book you have sections on the many different photographers that are part of the street photography scene along with a selection of their photos.
Now, normally I find it hard to read books without getting distracted, or bored if I’m honest, but I read this book cover to cover in a few hours one afternoon. Obviously the book isn’t 240 of text, the bulk of the content is images but the balance was right and along with the information about street photography and the individual photographers you get a good selection of images that I’ll certainly be looking through again both for inspiration and education.
After reading through the book there are some photographers and images that I am more drawn to than others. Street photography seems to be a genre where there are a lot of photographers taking images that don’t tend to stand alone, but are much more meaningful as a body of work when they are shown with a collection of images on a theme. While I do like the collections of work, I must say it’s the single images that have some impact that I prefer. Whether it’s a serious moment in a life, a humorous moment or an image which is compositionally powerful, it’s those that I enjoy the most, and luckily, there are many photographers producing these images and this books highlights some of the good ones.
So just in terms of learning about a particular genre of photography, I’d say that this is one book that should be on your wish list. The icing on the cake is the price. It’s currently under £10 and considering the content, it’s a bargain.
If you have an interest in Street Photography, I highly recommend this book.