October 24th, 2026
In my never ending struggle to improve upon my advanced-amateur photography skills, I signed up for a Street Photography workshop hosted by Mike’s Camera. This was a 3-part class – a Zoom lecture about the subject, then a chance to try out our skills in one of my un-favorite places in Sacramento – Old Town. More on that in a minute. We then had a day or two to work through our results, and submit 3 of our images for an informal review, also a Zoom meeting. No stress – it sounded like a nice way to kill a few hours on a Saturday, when I had absolutely nothing planned. Much like the rest of the week other than medical appointments. Sigh.
Getting back to Old Sac’ – there are a few blocks along the Sacramento River where most of the buildings date back to the 1800’s, some of the streets are cobblestone, and most of the streets have raised, covered wooden walkways. There is also a railroad museum, an old railroad station (the train still runs), and an old paddle wheel tour boat which at one time, used to rent the rooms out by the hour. I won’t talk about why…you can figure that out. It all sounds pretty good until you realize that it is a giant tourist trap, filled with candy stores, restaurants trying to look like they are authentic old west establishments, lots of tattoo shops, and sometimes a lot of strange people. This was a week from Halloween, so I expected it to be especially strange.
So what is Street Photography? I’ve sort of done it in the past without really understanding the rules. It is a real genre of photographic art, which focuses on real-life, candid shots in public space. It can be in pretty much any public space, not just on a street. And it has to have “presence of life” which is some evidence of human presence. It cannot be just images of buildings, empty streets, subways. And it has to tell some kind of story – an interaction, a decisive moment, or even a thoughtful stare at something. As a photographer, you can just wander the streets of a city, looking for a good setting with people interacting with someone or something. It might be a person sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons, some type of street performance….just about anything qualifies.
The difficult part for me is the invasion of privacy – I never feel comfortable photographing strangers, in any situation, where you can identify their faces. So this was definitely something new for me.
There were only four participants in this workshop, and we met in Old Sac at about 10:00AM, which is still a quiet time on the streets there. We chatted for a bit, were given some basic instructions, and then set off each on their own. No coaching….just go off and take pictures.
I had some ideas on what I wanted to do, but there just were not a lot of people around that early. I wound up entering a few of the shops, including a pinball gallery, and really did not find too much of interest, at least to my eye, until I walked by a barber shop. That looked interesting – except I was intercepted by someone at the door. He was just checking to make sure I was not working for ICE. He looked me over, realized I was just an old guy with a camera, and said go ahead. A sad sign of the times.
By noon, the streets started to fill up with families, tourists, some street performers, a few people dressed up for Halloween, and of course, a few people who probably should be getting treatment somewhere. Having wandered through all the streets a few times, I was getting a bit tired, but I managed to hopefully capture a few good images before I left. One group was really interesting – outside of one game shop a bunch of guys were trying out yo-yo’s. I thought that might make for some interesting slow motion, blurred shots, but I never did quite get what I wanted. It was fun trying though. That’s how you learn.
This genre of photography has been around for a long time, dating back to the late 1800’s, when black & white was the only option. That choice seems to have persisted through the years, and much of what you see in galleries is still in B&W. I shoot exclusively in color, but with the magic of Adobe Lightroom, converting is simply a button away…with some editing for things like exposure and contrast.
The photo I tacked on to the beginning is a mystery to me…..this was a street person (aka unhomed) who was chatting with a couple, so I decided to capture the moment. I had purposely set the camera to a relatively long exposure (1/4s), and the guy started to spin around, hence the blur. But I don’t understand what overlaid part of his body. Makes for a good Halloween photo….the disappearing man.
I shot an all-time low for over three hours, 170 images, and culled that down to about 13 that sort of fit the definition of what we were supposed to be doing. I’ll find out when the instructor reviews them. I’m still uncomfortable photographing strangers without their consent, so I’m not sure how often I’ll go wandering around in a city doing this, especially in foreign lands. Could be dangerous.
Peace
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