It’s not what tools you use, it’s how you use them

I recently entered a street photography shot into a couple of competitions. One was the APOY 2020 ‘City Life’ round and the other was a community contest on Photocrowd. This is the image I entered:

I took this on my phone (a Google Pixel 3) and edited it in Lightroom. I was waiting on the platform at Cologne Train Station when I spotted this impeccably dressed man and I knew I needed to get a shot! I positioned myself so that the arch structure of the train station was nicely framing the man, and just as I took the photo, he looked up and saw me. I like the way he is looking directly at the camera.

It did reasonably well in both competitions, coming in the top 26% of the APOY contest and top 7% in the Photocrowd one.

I think it shows that you don’t always need a DSLR or compact camera, and smartphones can work really well, particularly for street photography. I’ll always prefer to have my Z7 or D7500 if possible, but as ever, it’s about how you use the tools that you have at the time. A smartphone image is better than no image at all!

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