Just A Man With A Camera

Well, so much for my one post a week plan. It's been a month, but I'm back at it. I had a plan to talk about something else, and then another thing, and another, and just continued putting it off.  You know how undiagnosed ADHD works right?  So here I am back at something I didn't really thing I'd be wanting to talk about, because I never thought I was ever really good at it, or happy with my attempts: street photography.

I feel like so much of online photography world(or at least what various algorithms are trying to show me) is focused on street photography. This is fine.  There's a lot of interest for street photography out there, but I've never felt much of a connection to it as a photographer because I think, like I said, I've never felt like any of my attempts have been very good. When I would look at my photos I would think they were bad, boring, or uninteresting. I also feel like I live in a pretty boring smaller city that doesn't lend itself as much in the way of interesting subjects, if not just things I'm tired of seeing photographed or trying to photograph.  That being said, I will be the first to admit that I don't get out much anymore these days.

So this past weekend while my wife and I were visiting family in Winnipeg and decided to check out a creator market, I decided I was going to give it a shot. As one of the youtubers I've been watching lately keeps saying "Just take a damn photo!" Before I could look at any of them on my computer, I had that annoying voice in my head telling me they weren't any good, but hey at least I tried. But do you know what happened? I actually liked a few of my shots.  Crazy right?  This first one I was convinced wasn't any good and would be deleted, because I didn't capture the front side of the man with the bike.  He caught my eye, because he was so well put together, walking his well maintaned bicycle through the market with perfect posture, in a nice cream coloured summer suit, and a bright red ascot.  This man put some work into riding his bike down to the market this morning. Part of me wishes I put this much work into anything, but I do love rolling out of bed and just throwing on some shorts with the most thought I put into my outfit is deciding which of my finely curated collection of Macho Man Randy Savage shirts I'm going to wear that day.  

I missed the ascot and outfit that caught my eye, and most of the bike. Automatic failure right? Well I like how this came out.  There's depth.  The arm in the foreground, the man and his bike, a market vendor, and finally the two people embracing in the background.  I may have missed the red ascot, so I converted it to black and white, and I feel like I ended up capturing how much life and how many stories were going on in this little outdoor market.  I'm happy with it.  Score one for me.

At the heart of this market is The Forks.  It's a permanent fixture in Winnipeg for tourism filled with small shops and places to eat. While my wife and my cousin's partner did some shopping, I snapped this one from a second floor walkway.  Again, I always feel like I'm not the best at capturing what it is about these scenes that looks so appealing.  I get back to my computer an it looks boring or not what I thought I was getting.  But this time I feel like I nailed having the leading lines guide the viewers eye through the image. The rafters in the ceiling are lined up with the tables on the floor, and the repeating pattern of the light fixtures in the centre.  There's even the balcony railing on the left hand side guiding the eye through the picture.