A cigarette, an unfinished sentence and a phone call in the background. A small adjustment to the light gives this ordinary street scene the weight it deserves.

There are photographs that don't quite seem to work when you first look at them. This one I took on the Brooklyn Bridge could be a good example. Too much weight on the right, with that enormous man dressed in black practically taking over half the frame. On the left, a woman taking a picture with her phone, someone sitting down, a handful of tourists coming and going...

What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by? View all responses I suppose this is the closest thing I have to a mantra: Take the work seriously. Yourself, not so much. I’m not particularly fond of mantras, to be honest. Most of them sound better printed on mugs than applied to an actual Tuesday morning. But this one has survived.

StreetSoul Zine #001 · September 2026 Waiting has a way of making people visible. A man sits with a cigarette. Another reads beside the water. A child takes up most of a bench; a few pages later, the bench is empty. The street carries on around them. It has other appointments. These photographs make up Waiting Room, the first issue of…

There is too much empty space on the left. At least, that is the first thing you could say about this photograph. The man is pushed well over to the right, almost trapped between the edge of the frame and the dark vertical line behind him. The wall takes up far more room than seems reasonable. A cleaner composition would probably crop some of it away.

How do you make time for self-care? View all responses I’m not very good at making time for myself. I’ll go out once I’ve answered this. Once I’ve finished that. There’s always one more small thing, and I keep believing it will only take five minutes. Then I look at the time. So, usually, making time for myself means closing the computer with something still pending.

I know. There’s a lot of wall. If your first thought was that I should crop some of it away, I can see why. The man is over on the right, almost everything seems to happen around him, and the left side looks rather underemployed. But every time I look at this photograph, I want to keep that space. He’s lighting a cigarette.

YouTube video by StreetSoul Photography

YouTube video by StreetSoul Photography

YouTube video by StreetSoul Photography

My phone is full of apps I apparently needed urgently and have not opened since 2023. These five are different. Lichess is where I play chess, usually with the confidence of a grandmaster and the decision-making of a distracted pigeon. It keeps my brain awake and my ego under control. Bicipalma gets me around Palma. It turns the city into a map of possible routes, provided there is a bicycle available and somewhere to leave it.

The best thing I’ve ever found randomly on the street wasn’t money or some forgotten treasure. It was a story that had already begun without me. A boy tore across the square, toy gun in hand, somewhere between a chase and an escape. I had no idea who the enemy was, or what rule I had just broken by walking into the scene.

Panoramic pictures go the other way, lengthening the long axis to the point where it becomes visually dominant.

YouTube video by StreetSoul Photography

The kindest thing anyone ever did for me was stay. It sounds almost too small when I write it like that. There was nothing to solve. Or maybe there was, but certainly not that day. I don’t remember any important words. I’m not even sure there were many words. I remember the presence. Someone sitting there without trying to drag me somewhere better.

I’d be a street photographer. Yes, predictable: a photographer choosing photography. What a plot twist. I’d go out without a clear route and probably spend far too long beside some ugly wall because something there felt almost right. Most days I’d come home with very little. One decent photograph, perhaps. Sometimes none. I like that kind of work. The walking, the looking, getting it wrong and going out again.

The weirdest coincidence I’ve ever experienced didn’t happen to me. It happened inside one of my photographs. At a fairground, I raised the camera because of an embrace, an exposed arm and a small cactus tattooed above the word Strong. That was enough. Later, while editing, I noticed the rest: three female figures with dark hair and black tops, all facing away from me, arranged from largest to smallest.