Amsterdam: street shots

First time experimenting with a more documentary style of street photography. Instead of looking for aesthetically pleasing frames, carefully composing them and selecting what to include or not, I simply walked around, waiting for something interesting to happen and hoping I’d be quick enough on a draw with my camera to capture that moment. I didn’t care some much about composition, exposure, or even checking if things were properly in focus. The name of the game was “seize the moment before it’s gone”.

Despite all that, the photographs turned out quite ok. I did have to recompose a few of them by cropping, but overall I was quite happy with the composition straight out of the camera. The colors work well together as well, with the shots pairing up nicely by their respective dominant color. Maybe I did it all intuitively and unconsciously, maybe I just got lucky.

In any case, I’m quite happy with how the photographs came out. Unlike my usual pictures that capture what the place looks like, these shots better convey what the place felt like, the experience of being there, in that place, on that particular day. There’s nothing specific to even identify it as Amsterdam (apart maybe from street signs), but the location itself is somewhat secondary.