Street Photography

Thursday 10th of March saw Keyworth Camera Club visited via Zoom by Dave Mason who gave us a very entertaining talk on street photography.

Dave said he looks for the extraordinary in the ordinary and added that street images should be as honest a representation of the real scene as they could be, so Dave does very little processing work to his photographs – what you see is what he photographed.

Before discovering the joy of street photography, Dave photographed architecture and got annoyed when people dared to walk into his photograph, thus ruining it. When a friend said he liked these so-called useless pictures, Dave took a hard look at them and saw some merit in what he had captured so decided to forget the architecture and concentrate on people going about their everyday lives and soon he was gripped by street photography.

Dave finds backgrounds and waits for the right person to move into them. He looks for complimentary or contrast in colour and/or light and different viewpoints. Mainly he tries to find some sort of humorous connection between the elements in his photographs – something he does extremely well going by the amount of out-loud laughter emitted by our members. 

The show was split into different sections covering a variety of places that street photography can be done, such as in museums, in cities, at county fairs and parades. Dave’s wonderful photographs were supported by background stories, many of which were as funny as the content of his images. 

Dave’s presentation proved you don’t need fancy cameras and expensive lenses to take great photographs, and as the street is accessible to all, there isn’t any excuse for any of use not to give it a try. All we need to do is hone our power of observation and we too can capture some memorable images of life around us.

Thanks Dave for giving us a superb talk that inspired us all. Your ability to make us laugh through your comments and photographs made your presentation one of the highlights of the season.