Glasgow Street (vol ii)

For this instalment of my foray into documenting the streets of Glasgow, I decided to switch up my equipment. Rather than use my trusty Sony RX100, I went with the Ricoh GR, a camera that is loved by street photographers far and wide for its size, stealth, and pre-set ‘snap’ focus mode. The lens on the Ricoh is fixed at 28mm. At first I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference, as that’s what my RX100 is, at the widest, but in actual fact it really did. Everything seemed so far away, and I apparently missed the ability to zoom in a little bit. It underscored just how close I was going to have to be to get decent pictures, which – honestly – terrifies me quite a bit, but that’s a good thing. I’m doing this project partly to force myself to get better results from the street. In the same vein, I’ve also realised that it’s far too easy to default to shooting ‘from the hip’ out of fear, and lose control over the framing of the shots… so I’m also working on slowing down and paying more attention to composition. That’s easier said than done.

Since I’ve been making more of an effort to take pictures just when I am out and about, I’ve begun to feel less like I’m engaged in taking ‘street’ photos, and more like I am just documenting my everyday life – which changes the way you approach things a bit. I’ve started to remember that when you shoot regularly, you begin to notice interesting scenes more naturally, and the world takes on a different kind of vibrance. It’s just a matter of getting the baws to actually act on that feeling.

Not all of the shots in this series are necessarily going to be all that great, but by the end of the year, hopefully I’ll be far more comfortable, and that will be obvious from the pictures. Having a renewed perspective on where I live will be a nice bonus.

Oh, and as it turned out, the pictures ended up from a bit of a wider catchment than just Glasgow… added points if you can work out the locations.