Captured #14: April 2025

Welcome to blossom season! 🌸

Nope, I’m not in Kyoto (one day!), just wandering the streets, parks and graveyards of Edinburgh. Towards the end of April each year (later than in Japan because we’re so far north), the city crawls out from six months of winter hibernation and blooms into life. It never fails to impress and this year we’ve had some unusually excellent weather which has made it feel even more special.

I haven’t got out with the camera that much over the past few weeks (I’m stuck in a creativity trough right now) but a lot of the pictures I’ve taken are dominated with pink. How could you ignore it?

Here are some of my favourites 🩷

The ethics of street photography

The more time I spend taking photos on the streets, the more I’ve become aware of others doing the same. It feels like street photography has become much more popular over the past couple of years. I appreciate this could be a form of frequency illusion but I don’t think it’s just that – there are more street-flavoured magazines, YouTubers and influencers out there these days, no doubt.

In many ways this is a good thing because there are more people pushing the boundaries of the street art form, but the downside is an increased awareness of people on the streets shoving their cameras in people’s faces. Not so good.

This intrusiveness is increasingly on my mind. I used to only take pictures of distant, unrecognisable figures because (A) I liked that kind of style, and (B) I didn’t have to worry about confrontation. Recently I’ve been trying to get closer to subjects, mainly because it offers a new photographic challenge but I think it can also produce much more interesting photographs. To some extent I’ve also become a bit less bothered about the confrontation thing, which isn’t really a thing 99%+ of the time.

This change of approach has made my overthinking brain question the ethics of it all. Taking photos of people on the street is legal in the UK, but that doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate. It’s legal to smoke on the street but blowing it in the face of someone sat at a bus stop would be considered aggressive and anti-social. There’s a lot of nuance.

As street photographers we need to be increasingly mindful of this. The best up-close street photos are those that somehow capture emotion of the person, or people in the frame. Some will call this “storytelling”. Photos of random people walking down the street or staring at a phone are often dull because they lack any hint of emotion. I know this because I’ve taken far too many of them. They can still work well as street photos because of composition or lighting, but they’re objectively in a different league to those photos which manage to capture emotion. The irony is that in order to get better at capturing moving moments, you’re probably going to have to take a lot of shitty photos of people walking down the street or standing at the bus stop, but as long as your intentions are good, I don’t think there’s a problem.

Some people will say you should ask before taking their photo (I had one of these recently), but that kinda defeats the point of candidly capturing life on the streets – the photograph becomes a portrait. Street portraits can be wonderful, but it’s a different form of street (if it’s street at all – a separate debate). There’s something magic in the candid when captured in the right way.

Some quite close-up photos of people I’ve taken recently

This style is still fairly new to me so I don’t think these photos are that great to be honest, but I do think I’ve sort of captured a bit of emotion here. The “phones eat first” one is definitely my favourite.

Some photos I took this month in a different style

Are these less interesting? I don’t think so personally, but maybe. The first two are actually up there with my favourites this year, but it’s all subjective isn’t it? Luckily I only shoot what I think looks good :)

Still pimping the Street Photo Social forum

Quite a few people have signed up to the FREE old-school, Street Photo Social forum recently and you can now browse the forum without signing up so you can read what people have been chatting about before creating your own account.

It’s a place for photographers (street-focused, but everyone welcome) to hang out, share work and chat about all things photography. There are a few forums around, but they are typically paywalled behind a subscription. This one is completely FREE and volunteer run.

https://forum.streetphoto.social

📺📚🎞️ Found Online

Here are a few photography-related things I’ve come across this month that you may want to watch, read or try! 💸 If you come across anything interesting, feel free to share with me! I’d love to hear from you.

Listening Party 🔈

Some music I’ve had on the digital decks this month.

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That’s it for April. See you next time 👋