As a wedding photographer who exclusively shoots in the wedding photojournalist style, I often find myself practicing by shooting street photography. Shooting the streets is similar to my chosen style of wedding photography: you need to have a great eye for composition and the relationships between people, and you need to be both quick to react to a once-in-a-lifetime moment and patient in waiting for it to occur (while trying to predict where and how it will happen). This is such a photo: while the relationships of the people don’t really play out much in terms of adding to its dramatic effect, it does possess elements of a cohesive and simple composition and required quick reflexes to capture before the crowd became aware of the guy with a camera. While it’s usually hard to describe what draws me to this or that composition, this one was fairly straight forward: as soon as I saw the smokers, I was reminded of pigeons huddling together for warmth while being segregated by an unfriendly populace. This is my favourite street photo in a while.
I look forward to spring and all of the wonderful weddings and wedding photography opportunities that this season has in store, both for myself and the brides and grooms.
