I've never enjoyed doing street photography in my hometown Carlisle. It is a very small City in the sparsest county in England (Cumbria) and after several years of living in London, I have often told myself that this just isn't a place that I can do street photography.
I've always worried about drawing attention to myself, about how people will react to my camera and me taking photos, about being limited to so few locations and struggling to find interesting subjects.
Places like London and New York, it is very easy to blend into the background, people are more accustomed to people taking photos and there a vast amount of interesting people, locations and subjects to photograph and so these are the type of places we think we need to be in order to do good street photography.
But since the coronavirus pandemic left me stuck in my home town, unable to travel, I finally became sick of letting it stop me from taking photos.
So I finally went out with my camera and attempted some street photography in this very small town and I quickly realised that all the stories I was telling myself were untrue.
No one reacted badly to me taking photos, there are plenty of things to photograph if you just make the effort to go out and look for them and it really is possible to do street photography anywhere.
It really is not as daunting as you think it will be, you just have to go out and try it, no matter where you live and how great is it to tell the 'story' of your town and it's people through the art of photography.
It is something I endeavour to try more frequently in the future.
Watch the video at the top of this page to see my photos and hear me discuss them in more detail.