The road to medium format street photography, for me, began with traditional street photography. If you “get” street photography, you’re on the road to Medium Street.

Street photography is a visual record of a chance moment. It’s usually unposed, sometimes unexpected and, for the viewer, more than the sum of its parts. It’s a movie in a single frame, a novel in a solitary image. Despite all that, street photography has been the stepchild of formal art photography, such as portrait or landscape photography: any photography where the act of taking a photograph is patiently planned and created. Street photography is the act of capturing the decisive moment by being in the right place at the right time. Being open to the possibility of the unknown.

Photographers who take their cameras to the streets, search a sea of moments to find that perfect story. Viewing good street photography tells the viewer as much about the person behind the camera as the scene in front. Our method often belies our attachment to and empathy for people.

Sometimes the photo is a moment of extraordinary history, such as when John Filo was there to capture the unimaginable grief and shock of a young woman at the “Kent State Shootings” in 1970.   Sometimes they depict ordinary people doing extraordinary things, as when Charles Ebbets photographed construction workers casually eating their box lunches at the edge of scaffolding high up on a New York skyscraper in 1932.  Street photography can capture moments in crowds or come in close for a more intimate view of an unforgettable person like the “Migrant Mother” photographed by Dorothea Lange in 1936.

I came to Medium Street because street photography is my passion.  Every photo walk is the chance to find a special moment in a sea of moments, to give the viewer that story in one frame. To find images that mean something to me, and more importantly, that resonate with the viewer. Each street photograph, for me, is the opportunity to capture a never to be repeated and forever remembered image. Every minute, every day is a different collection of stories. I started with film and continued with 35mm cameras to capture those street images. It honestly never gets old.

But I had questions. Could I see more? Tell more? Give a viewer more layers of meaning in a single image?   I wondered if, with more detail, I could make those stories more vibrant, bring them more to life.