Street | Urban | Travel | Photography by Marcus Puschmann
Street Photography is also about capturing juxtapositions. Like a girl having too many legs. I snapped this image with my iPhone 14 Pro one the steps of San Lorenzo Cathedral in Genoa. Click “read more” to see it from your slightly different angle.
Continue reading “Too many legs”
We are wrapping up 2025 with a little family vacation in the Austrian mountains. Actually it is the first time in what seems ages that the four of us spending off-time together. Actually we are 4+1, as Big Girl’s boyfriend has joined us for the trip. Using the downtime to go through the year’s images, I found this photograph of a teenage boy I took in one of Tashkent’s markets. He’s framed by a butchery stall that looks almost sculptural—piled high with pale pink bones, cut clean and stacked with casual precision. And there he is, calm and completely at home, perched behind the counter like the quiet conductor of controlled chaos.
What caught me first wasn’t the scale of the meat or the gleam of the blade resting nearby, but his expression. Lips pursed, a whistle clearly forming—maybe already sounding—he looks as if he’s passing the time with a tune only he can hear. It’s a wonderfully human detail in an otherwise raw, visceral scene. While customers come and go, while orders are shouted and cleavers rise and fall, he whistles.
There’s something timeless about it. Markets like this have existed for centuries, and so have moments like this one: a young helper learning the trade, standing knee-deep in the everyday reality of work, still finding space for playfulness. The whistle softens the sharpness of the setting. It turns a butcher’s stall into a stage, and the boy into its most memorable character.
Street photography is often about contrasts, and here they sing—quite literally.
Taken with my Nikon Zf with the Nikkor 40mm f/2. Image specs 1/60 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 1250.
If you are looking for tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Have a great Monday
Marcus
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Sometimes a street image demands color. Like this one, taken in Genoa’s medieval old town near the Genova Piazza Principe railway station. The warm glow from inside the shop juxtaposes perfectly with the dark street and the bold statement on the wall that translates to “Bite the State”. The color contrast captures the mood of the image, the contrast between public dissent and tranquil private life on a quite late evening. The warm light inside feels safe and calm, very different from the dark and gritty street outside. Things like the tilted street sign, worn walls, and wet pavement suggest a place that’s been a bit forgotten or ignored. A scene that I saw and immediately felt drawn to capturing it.
Images specs are 1/60 sec @ f/2 and ISO 500. I took the photograph with the Nikon Zf and the Nikkor Z 40mm f/2. Postprocessing in Lightroom Classic (increasing the contrast and adding a vignette).
If you are looking for more tips and inspirations around street photography tips, check out my free “Learning Center”.
Wish you a great Monday!
Marcus
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The world’s a stage…. you know I write about this a lot in the context of street photography. To find a background and waiting for a matching subject to appear. And if you are lucky, like in this candid street shot, it turns out to be almost something like human camouflage.
This would also fall under the compositional technique Juxtaposition. With Juxtaposition you bring together two or more objects in a photograph that attract the viewer of the image either through their similarity or their contrast. In each case, the photograph works because these elements combine to a joint visual story that the image carries in addition to the visual weight of the individual objects.
You can find Juxtapositions everywhere. You will be amazed how much you discover when you actively look for them. So next time to suffer from photographers block and want to try something new to overcome it go out and shoot a series of Juxtapositions. The more you train your eye to see them the more you can use them as an effective element in your photography.
For all my inspirations as well as my easy to use Street Photography Quick Tips, check out my free Learning Center
Have a great Sunday
Marcus
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There is more from the last weekend’s visit to Genoa’s Museum of Natural History. In my last post I have mentioned juxtaposition as compositional element. Now how about this juxtaposition? This white tiger was by far the largest tiger I ever saw, dead or alive. Crazy big. The card in the display said the animal died in 1758 in a Circus, was subsequently stuffed and eventually ended up in the museum for everyone to simply admire. The Tiger was huge by my standards. How must that little girl feel looking up to this white giant?
A street photographer can apply many compositional elements to the images to generate a viewers interest. Leading lines guide the eye through the image, creating a sense of depth and direction. The rule of thirds divides the frame into a grid, helping to position subjects in a way that feels balanced and engaging. And, like in this example, Juxtaposition places contrasting subjects or elements side by side to create visual tension or highlight differences. Like the white giant and the little girl.
Taken with my Nikon ZF and the Nikkor Z 40mm 1:2 SE, image specs 1/125 sec @ f/5.6 and ISO 6400, 40mm focal length. Jpg out of camera using the Zf’s default black & white mode that can be quick-selected by a dial on top of the camera.
If you are looking for more tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Have a great Thursday
Marcus
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The man and the peacock – a fun street shot I took an hour ago in the garden of Seville‘s Real Alcazar, the royal palace. This image is also a good example of capturing the viewer’s attention by means of a juxtaposition. What also contributes to the composition is that the photograph has quite a few triangles.
I took the image with my iPhone 14 Pro. B&W conversion in the iPhone photos app.
The Real Alcazar is an amazing place. Stay tuned for a post covering all the highlights.
Have a great Monday!
Marcus
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We’re not quite at Halloween, but close enough for this snapshot I took last weekend during a tour of the “Bayerische Landesaustellung” in Ansbach. And for sure a good reminder to make the most of every day, to do what you love and not waste time with worrying about things you can’t change. Because he is always there…
The statue of the Grim Reaper on display in the exhibition is made of sand stone and was created by sculptor Claude Curé back in 1723 and was part of the decoration of the burial chapel of a prince bishop in the Würzburg Cathedral.
Taken with the Leica SL2-S and the Vario-Elmarit-SL 1:2.8/24-70 ASPH. RAW conversion into monochrome and some post processing (mainly cropping) done in Lightroom Classic.
If you are looking for some tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Have a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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Nothing like a good juxtaposition to start into the weekend. Putting huge and tiny into one photograph. Giantesses and Dwarfs. Portland and its many awesome murals provide great opportunities to capture these opposites.
Continue reading “Giantesses and Dwarfs”
Back home from Memphis I found that whatever was left from an amazing summer in Germany has left. It was raining all day with temperatures close to freezing.
The best thing to do? Meeting up with old friends. Instead of a planned hike we escaped into a well-known art gallery. A perfect place for street photography on a rainy day, unless you want to go for the first puddle shooting of the wet season.
Although I had my E-M1 in the backpack, I left in the locker and shot with my iPhone 8 plus. Which is perfectly suitable for street photography. And in a gallery environment, it even has its advantages. Other visitors tend to totally ignore you when you shoot with a phone. They don’t even bother walking out of the frame. This would have been a different story if I have had the E-M1 with the rather large 12-100mm in my hand. For more photos from my gallery shooting continue after the jump… Continue reading “Rainy Sunday”
The job that pays the bills is really giving me a hard time tis week in Portland. No chance to enjoy even a tiny bit of the record temperatures and summer sunshine that graces the Rose City in April, and no chance to pick up the camera for any kind of photography.
Instead I’m sitting in a windowless office solving all kinds of problems that came up in the last days. Tough luck…the glory of business travel.
At least I get to fly back home tomorrow, although need to go via Seattle to Amsterdam instead of taking the direct flight. Believe it or not, this is cheaper and we need to save travel costs. But also one more chance to miss a flight due to delays or whatever other reasons.
The photo above I took in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC the other week. Good example that you can shoot perfectly fine street photography in a museum.
Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom. Image specs are 1/25 sec @f/4 and ISO 3200. Focal length was 35mm (70mm full frame equivalent). I needed to crank up the ISO as it was pretty dark in the Hall of Human Origins, where I caught this great juxtaposition of the prehistoric skeleton looking into the face of a visiting lady and vice versa. I wonder who is seeing ghosts 😉
Wish you all a great Thursday!
Marcus
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Street Photography captures life as it happens. Or as it not really happens. Like me making me a cook for a moment. In front of a Chinese restaurant in Portland.
I wonder what the cook must have thought, seeing the strange guy with a camera in front of his window, crouched down, inching his way sideways, upwards, downwards, in a desperate attempt to put his head on top of another body. But the opportunity to become a cook for a moment was just to good to pass up.
In case you wonder why the cam is not at the photographer’s eye? Thanks to the rotatable LCD screen of my PEN-F.
Taken with my Olympus PEN-F and the 12mm F/2 prime lens. Image specs 1/60 sec @ f/2 and ISO 1600.
Have a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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Instant Inspiration (4) – Juxtaposition
In Episode 4 of my “Instant Inspirations” I talked about Juxtaposition, a great compositional element to add interest to photographs.
There are a few opposites also in this image from the streets of Nuremberg. Old vs young, big vs small, sitting vs standing, real vs virtual, smiling vs seriousness.
Then you have multiple layers in this photo as well. The man in the foreground, the dressing dummies in the middle and the wall posters of the smiling children above and behind as background.
How many opposites can you put in an image? I would love to see your results, post links in the comment section.
Shot taken with my Olympus PEN-F and the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4-5.6. Image specs 1/160 sec @ f/8 and ISO 1000. It was already late in the afternoon and a bit dark, hence I had to increase the ISO to get the necessary depth of field with ab f/8 aperture and the higher shutter speed to ensure sharpness of the man.
RAW conversion in Lightroom CC.
Have a great Tuesday!
Marcus
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For all my free inspirations and tips around photography visit my Learning Center.
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