Permanent Tourist

WordPress development and photography by Mark Howells-Mead

Posts about street photography

  • Bern, 2024

    Taking a brain break by being where there are interesting scenes to ponder.

  • Grand Canal, Venice, photographed from the Ponte dell'Accademia

    Surprised by Venice

    We took advantage of a much-reduced number of tourists in July to visit Venice. I came away with an unexpected number of good and unique photographs.

  • Nico and Mark from Say Hello in Berlin

    Photos from the annual WordPress conference – the biggest in the world in 2019.

  • Shop fronts in La Spezia, Italy

    Black-and-white photos from wanderings in the Italian Cinque Terre.

  • Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

    A series of unposed photos amongst the stelae of the famous Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.

  • After some rushing around, I find myself on my own in Zurich for a couple of days. After dealing with the day job, I have the evening to myself, with no pressure and no responsibilities. Leaving work behind, I head for the old town and the anonymity of a familiar, traditional and noisy restaurant. The…

  • Black-and-white photos from wanderings in the Italian Cinque Terre.

  • Black-and-white photos from wanderings in the Italian Cinque Terre.

  • If you like observational photography – also known inaccurately as “street photography” – then Yves’ blog is worth following. It certainly makes me want to get out and spend time watching and waiting myself. Here are a few of my own efforts, from my Flickr set.

  • The freedom to take photos in public places is under attack. Until now, in most countries in Europe you were safe to take and publish photographs that are taken from public ground: a law called “Freedom of Panorama”. When you’re on holiday, you can take a photo from the London Eye and share it with your friends on Facebook.…

  • I first tried a rangefinder camera – one with a little glass window in the corner of the camera – back in 2007. I found an Olympus 35 RC at a camera fair for about Fr. 20 and tried it out on a trip to London. I liked the feeling of using it, but it was…

  • On this grey weekend, I’ve continued with extensions to the website by adding a new gallery page for photos from Zurich’s Street Parade.

  • I spent a couple of days in London in June, primarily to spend time taking documentary photographs on the streets I used to pound when I lived in England. One of the things which strikes me is how so many things seem to be commercialized by supermarkets: from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the simple…

  • It’s not about the tool you use

    Pro photographer Zack Arias is thrown down the challenge of taking street portraits using nothing but a point-and-shoot camera and an optically-triggered second flash gun. Zack’s ebullient approach and the results we see towards the end of the film show that photography isn’t about using really expensive equipment.

  • Back at the end of 2010, I began a much-researched hunt for a new camera; the successor to the D80 which had served me well until then. As part of my research, I’d looked at small interchangeable lens cameras like the GF1 and Olympus PEN, but had decided against them due to the (for me)…

  • For six weeks in the summer every year, young children under the watchful eye of a more experienced adult lead the local half brown, half white goats through the streets of Zermatt twice a day.

  • I was contacted a while back by the editor of Czech photo blog Odcloněno, Michal Fanta: Michal asked to interview me and use some of my photos on the blog. The interview was published this morning; here’s the English transcript. Many thanks to Michal for the exposure and, as he’s mentioned; please do get in…

  • My family were very generous at Christmas and for my birthday, by helping me to get some cash together to buy new camera equipment. Jo gave me the lens which has been top of my list for some time now, which I discovered whilst looking for more expensive toys: the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 DX. This…

  • I decided over Christmas that 2011 would be the year that I would finally do something about getting the results I’m looking for in my street photography and candid, social event photography: in short, I would buy a new camera to work in alternation with my D80, which continues to serve me well.

  • The Images Festival of Visual Arts is the only open air photographic festival in Switzerland, which takes place in the picturesque town of Vevey, on the shores of Lake Geneva, every two years.