About Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography. 

Random Acts of Photography: People Walking by Edition

Random Acts of Photography: People Walking by Edition

I've been collecting an impromptu series in my street photography over the last while. It started organically, without me really realising that I was doing it, but once I did I set out to consciously capture similar subjects. The basic idea is simply "people walking by things". Sounds straight foreword enough, but there's a few "rules" to the series. 

The point was to create a strong graphic composition, so the subject has to be walking across the frame and the camera has to be at right angles, so that there are strong vertical and horizontal lines. The other thing is to make sure that the person is in a reasonably decent pose, so that you are getting a sense of movement. This sounds simple enough, but when you're shooting on the street, especially when using a mirrorless camera, there is a slight delay. So between when you press the shutter and when it actually takes the picture, there would be enough movement so that the person no longer forms a strong shape in the image (with both legs together for example). It's easy enough when using a DSLR as the delay is negligible. Shooting these with my fuji cameras (as I have the older ones with significant shutter delays) requires a degree of practice. After a while I managed to judge the timing just right so that I would know the point in a persons stride to press the shutter button so that they would be in the right pose by the time the camera captures the image.

Anyway, here's a selection from the series. As always, random acts is presented without comment. Enjoy.

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