The midwit in the middle would represent the overthinking, hyper-analytical approach that tries to dissect, strategize, and "perfect" every single decision or action, often missing the bigger picture.

The guy on the left is dumb and naive. The guy on the right is a wise old sage.

Effectively, they come to the same conclusion.

The more I do street photography, the harder it gets.

Probably because over time our standards keep rising. What once felt like an accomplishment - capturing an interesting subject and a good composition now feels like the baseline.

But why?

Recently, this year in general I’ve been way more critical of my work, more aware to the nuances that separate a good photo from a great one.

This isn’t a bad thing - it’s a natural part of the creative process, but it can be challenging.

I love this quote from Ira Glass talking about ‘The Gap’: If you haven’t read this before, read it twice.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - Ira Glass

Photo book are one of the easily the best formats to consume photography and as my small collection continues to grow I thought it could be fun to geek out and flick through a few copies and share some thoughts with you.

In this blog I’ll share some recent purchases as well as books I’ve had a while that I consider among my top favourites.

This is my perfect Fujifilm X100vi film simulation recipe for achieving some pleasing jpegs using the Real Ace film simulation.

This is my perfect Fujifilm X100vi film simulation recipe for achieving some pleasing jpegs using the Real Ace film simulation.

I recently returned from a brief, delightful trip to Rimini, Italy. Whilst I was there I experienced both sunrise and sunset along the picturesque beach.

Bathed in perfect light and surrounded by stunning colors, I found myself spontaneously capturing anything that caught my eye. This got me reflecting on two key ideas that I always keep in mind to ensure every photography session remains enjoyable.

These techniques work pretty much whenever and wherever I am. So let’s talk about it.

If you give your former less experienced self any advice on street photography, what would it be? This was an Instagram thread I posted a few weeks back and it recieved some interesting replies, I thought it would be cool to go through those replies and share my thoughts on advice people would give to their younger selves.

I recently bought the Leica M11p and 35mm Summilux. For those who've followed my 2023 content, you know I've loved the Q2. Many said the Q2 is a stepping stone to an M body, and they were spot on.

In this blog, I'll share why I bought it, my plans for it and first impressions, If you're curious about this setup, I hope to cover your questions.

Late in 2023, I went to the Leica store in London with my Q2, ready to trade it for the M11p and a 35mm f/1.4 Summilux. In my view, it's a dream setup.

Street photography is not easy. Let’s not pretend the masters of documentary photography got there in 5 simple steps. They obviously spent an huge chunk of their lives out there doing the do, not pondering on how to make it easy. Therefore the idea should be to get better, not wish that things were easier.

But as with anything in life that requires progression, I think it’s important to break things down to make those steps of progression a little more approachable. Especially if you’re quite new to street photographers, i hope these following 5 ideas can really help set you off in the right direction.

I have created 2 custom Fujifilm film simulation recipes in the past, I’ll link both those here. But as well as those there is another recipe that I just keep going back too.