In a city like London, it’s an inviting classroom for fly-on-the-wall photographers to practice the art of street photography; London is unlike anywhere else.
The level of energy, diversity, and community I’ve felt in London has validated my choice, as a Canadian lifestyle photographer, to call it home. I moved here one year ago from Vancouver to further my commercial and editorial photography career – alongside my obsession with street photography.
Every walk through Central London, the East End, near me in Hackney, and every route is always different. No two walks are ever the same, and if you take the same journey every day, you’ll document a new perspective, moment, or face every time.
It’s a forgiving city to practice street photography because of the sheer volume of scenes and moments that manifest on every corner.
It feels like a video game: each kilometre of walking brings you to a new area with a completely different cast of characters. It ranges from commuters in suits in the Liverpool Street area, eclectic families in Dalston, exorbitantly well-dressed in Mayfair, oblivious tourists on Oxford Street, and all walks of life you’ll find through SoHo, Westminster, and everywhere else.
Street photography inspires all my creative pursuits
Beyond candid street photography of strangers, the diversity of backdrops is why I love shooting on the street for fashion photography, too. London’s architecture and facades range from medieval to modern, with geographically ambiguous-feeling backgrounds that could be placed anywhere in the world. Rather than attempting to reinvent my studio for every look in an editorial, when the light changes outdoors, a new opportunity arises.
Whether it’s new construction, a parked car, or the time of year, shooting outdoors changes every day. It’s an attractive choice (and an inviting challenge) for someone with weapons-grade ADHD like myself who always seeks new stimulus – and gets bored quickly when shooting the same thing, in the same way, over and over.
That’s why I wanted to leave my hometown of Vancouver, Canada (at least for now), because I needed to see and embrace a new city with the same inspiration, awareness, and awe I get when I travel.
In a new city with that feeling of awe, streets feel more like my studio than my traditional studio does. The geometry, textures, and expressions inspire my other photography pursuits like street style, architecture, lifestyle, personal branding, and even dating photography. Yep, dating photography is surprisingly how I make the majority of my living here in London. It’s something you probably didn’t know existed, and neither did I. But it is the most easygoing and enjoyable commissioned shooting style I offer: an explanation I dive into in my London dating photographer’s guide.
Why I shoot street photography
While directed photoshoots, specifically different branches of fashion and lifestyle photography, are how I make my living and what I brand myself as, street photography is what truly relaxes me.
I love the results that directed photoshoots create, but they’re not relaxing. To do them well, they take days of planning and preparation so they execute in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Everything is prepared in directed photoshoots so that minimal decision making is made on the day of (especially if I’m shooting with subjects who aren’t models).
On the other hand, street photography is rooted in spontaneity, adaptiveness, and ultimately becoming an observer rather than a director. It works a different part of my brain that doesn’t get worn out from directed photoshoots – and I hope it never does. Somehow, I relax from photography with more photography.
I learnt this lesson when I travelled Asia for one year before my arrival in London. I went into my trip thinking I would plan photoshoots with models, stylists, and hair and makeup artists in every city. After one shoot fell apart due to a team member ghosting, I recognized the stress these shoots put on me. While it’s a healthy stress in the right conditions, I wasn’t looking for that while traveling. This is when I understood the important role street photography plays in my life and in finding a healthy balance when juggling different creative outlets.
I spent the following year shooting exclusively street photography, and I wrote about everything I learned my guide about mastering street photography: tips and techniques for overcoming awkwardness.
Street photography is what I see myself doing until I’m 100 years ago. These images appreciate with time, and I shoot today for the book I may make in 30+ years time, just like one of my inspirations Greg Girard, a renowned Canadian photographer who shot for decades without expecting anyone to notice his work – but they only in the 2000’s did he become revered. He shot for himself and what he cared about, first and foremost.
When embodying the mantra of shooting what you care about and sharing what you think is cool (not for pleasing other people in exchange for likes), tools today like social media, a website, or a blog (that didn’t exist in Greg Girard’s time) becomes a catalyst – rather than a formula – for telling your own story.
How I share my street photography
For me, I’ve leaned into a website for street photography and a blog because it’s an online gallery that I control the entire experience of. It lasts forever and is discoverable (which is probably how you wound up here), rather than an Instagram post that’s quickly forgotten about and you’re pressed to create new content rather than art.
Once you see beyond blog posts equating to clickbait, they become a way to express yourself, house your bodies of work, and become a public journal that you control how a viewer experiences. With enough traction, an online gallery (blog) gathers more visitors than any physical gallery could. It’s an accessible medium we have as creators that artists before us didn’t have the privilege of publishing on. You retain ownership of your art and the experience it creates.
My London street photography gallery is my ongoing destination to house the street photography work I create in this city. This sits alongside my worldwide street photography gallery: a home for my street photography everywhere else in the world – including my favourites from London.
Nonetheless, my Instagram is still a destination for sharing my ongoing work and creative projects. It keeps me connected to my peers, leads me to meet new ones, and as much as I (and many) have a love-hate relationship with it, it’s my street photography journal – and where all my photography styles meet as one.
One year walking London
Having lived in London for one year now, I’m fortunate to say the awe, inspiration, and awareness have yet to dissipate. Especially as I anxiously awaited my commissioned photoshoots to ramp up when I first moved here (and hence leaned into dating photography while waiting for all my equipment to cross the Atlantic Ocean), it left me with nothing but the beautiful gift of time to focus on street photography in London and furthering the techniques I shared in my street photography guide.
Over the course of the last 12 months, I was fortunate to document some of my favourite street photography images that I feel quintessentially embody London. The unique faces, fashion, expression, and moments I documented up close and personal characterise the way I see the city I now call home.
Subconsciously, the themes my images seem to target fall into the categories of:
Characters
Layers
Moments
Families
Pairs
Up-Close
1. Characters
To me, characters around London are the reason I take to the streets each week and explore. It’s a game of cat and mouse when looking for characters, except I don’t know who the mouse is – but I’ll know it when I see it.
Some street photographers are fishers while others are hunters. To me (and my ADHD), I always need to keep moving. If I stay too long in place trying to get the perfect frame, I often find I get diminishing returns and I’m rarely satisfied. As a hunter roaming the streets, it lends itself to being attracted to photography characters.
Defining a street photography subject as a “character” doesn’t necessarily mean parodying them – I do not seek to publish an image that I wouldn’t want of myself published, nor would I put someone in a negative light. Having come from Vancouver, a city with a strong homelessness crisis, I never target the homeless. You’re in their home when you’re walking the street; they have no alternative.
Characters are those who stand out: they’re animated, offer a visual personality, and leave more questions unanswered than answered in a portrait of them.
Characters make for easily defined subjects in a street photo: it’s clear what the image, or who the image, is about. Layering, on the other hand, takes composition and depth as the subject rather than solely the face in frame.
2. Layering
Layering in street photography places subjects in the foreground, midground, and background of the frame. They’re spread out in a way that complements several compositional techniques, such as rules of thirds (also known as the golden ratio: keeping a subject on the thirds line, either horizontal or vertical, of a frame), leading lines, and framing. The subject is often the overall frame and composition itself.
When using people, where their eyes are looking directs your viewer’s attention and guides them around an image.
London is the perfect testing ground for capturing layers in street photography. The density of the streets and sidewalks, the diversity of characters, and the historic through to modern architecture create a unique canvas not found anywhere else.
3. Moments
Freezing a moment in time is the unique competitive advantage of photography as an art form. Documenting a moment is what photography can do that painting, sculpting, and other media cannot.
In street photography, capturing moments eternalises what would otherwise be forgotten. The mundane becomes immortalised in time. Things today that seem commonplace become nostalgic in the decades to come.
In the last year that I’ve lived in London, numerous social and political events have shaped the moments on the streets. From holiday celebrations, gatherings, Palestine marches, far-right protests, and controversial police action, street photography quickly becomes a perspective of documentary photography. It creates everlasting images that represent this period of time: a period many would call turbulent and testing – how will this be looked back on in decades to come?
4. Families
Street photography becomes innately personal: what you choose to photograph becomes a reflection of you.
Photographing children is controversial for many photographers. This is where your intention comes into importance. I seek to document expression, moments, emotion, and composition. Children add depth and a layer of reality. Moreover, I see myself, my own family, and the family I hope to have when I create these images. They create humour and connection that goes beyond photographing well-to-do adults.
Some photographers avoid children, and ultimately families, like the plague: they worry about the implications and the potential confrontation in the moment. While this is where avoiding street photography awareness techniques comes into play, after travelling the world, I’ve found children and families paint a picture of the culture as a whole: the comparisons of families around the world in my travel street photography are some of my favourite contrasts in my time as a street photographer.
5. Pairs
Like any pattern, pairs capture my attention. A subject that would otherwise be looked over on its own becomes eye-catching when complemented by a second half. Photographing pairs, and ultimately patterns, creates organic opportunities for compositional elements to naturally align in frame.
6. Up close
This past year, I’ve shot all my street photography in London with a 28mm pancake lens on my Canon R5. While my street photography guide offers insight into using larger lenses, specifically my RF 24-70 f/2.8 L, I’ve come to love the tiny, unassuming size of the pancake. Moreover, the 28mm focal length forces me to get close to fill the frame, but the tiny size rarely attracts attention. It’s easy to lean my one camera arm in close and snap.
This 28mm led me into my London Fashion Week street style approaches. It’s become my style using this focal length and tiny lens, leading me to get commissioned by Burberry, and most recently, Pinterest at London Fashion Week SS26.
I love my 24-70 – it’s my go-to lens for all my commercial and editorial photography work. However, street photography in London is like a classroom: it’s your opportunity to experiment with different techniques and approaches to see what you find enjoyable and what encourages you to keep coming back out. A tiny lens makes quick photo walks – or keeping my camera with me – more routine.
Bonus: Objects
Found object photography seems to be the main reason I keep a camera always on me. My Canon R5 comes out when I leave the house with the purpose of taking photos. Meanwhile, my Fujifilm X100V comes with me in any other situation outside of that. Whether it’s to the pub, the shop, or anywhere else, I always have a camera with me.
I once thought getting my iPhone 14 Pro Max with a killer camera, which takes RAW photos that I can edit, would be my go-to pocket camera. However, carrying my phone around doesn’t change the way I see the world. Carrying my Fuji, on the other hand, gives me a reason to look for opportunities.
Nearly all my found object photography comes at night, and most of it stays on a hard drive because I don’t feel they’re worth sharing (yet). They’re for me. But this one cassette tape I found in West London earlier this year is my favourite (and didn’t fit into any of the above categories).
If you’re interested in seeing why carrying a camera with you at all times is important, check out my worldwide street photography and see if you can spot which photos were taken with my Fuji. Any time I use this camera, it’s never because I intended on taking a photo that day: it’s there for when the opportunity presents itself.
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you seeing London as I see it. I’ve grown more in the last year than I have in the years prior in Vancouver.
London holds an incredible home for photographers and photographer communities. I’m still finding my roots here, and I look forward to sharing yearly London street photography collections to come (along with my book in 30 years that I alluded to earlier).
If you connect with these images or the words I’ve written, I encourage you to follow my recent work on Instagram and join my newsletter below: it’s a far better way to cut through the noise and algorithms.
And if you’re a street photographer in London, I’m always up for a chat! Thanks for stopping by – and check out my other popular ramblings or photography collections below.