street photography

Little bits of Manchester

/ mikeosbornphoto / 12 Comments

Living in a big city centre like Manchester during lockdown wasn’t always easy. I craved countryside and coast, even growing tired of the usual urban views here.

So on a series of walks with my camera, I stopped looking upwards and searched for details that you might take for granted.

Enjoy the fragments and if you know their locations and recognise them, that’s a little bonus!

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Link to mikeosbornphoto's Manchester photo shop

Portraits of Ethiopia

/ mikeosbornphoto / 11 Comments

My visit to Ethiopia shattered the 1980s image of an impoverished nation wracked by famine. Today it’s a thriving, bustling place with a population in excess of 100 million people.

It’s very easy to make contact with Ethiopians as a Western visitor – they’re enthusiastic and want to talk to you. Kids are delighted when you take their photograph. Like Cuba, life is lived outdoors in the warm climate, so it’s easy to come away with candid shots.

They’re a proud bunch, with young people taking great pride in their appearance. Their elders are often serene with wisdom-etched faces. If, like me, you tend to shy away from capturing humans, Ethiopia may shift your focus.

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Cuban candids

/ mikeosbornphoto / 20 Comments

I’m a reluctant portrait and street photographer. But a recent trip to the revolutionary island of Cuba pushed me into unusual territory.

This Caribbean land mass has a large and engaging population. The warm climate means that life often takes place outdoors. People gather in city squares and on street corners, meaning it’s relatively easy to capture images.

My tips for remaining undetected are a good zoom lens and an ability to pretend that you’re taking a photograph of something else. As you can see with some of these images, that didn’t always work.

But if this gives just a hint of the Cuban people’s essence, it was worth the effort.

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Pavilion

/ mikeosbornphoto / 8 Comments

Every summer, a temporary building springs up outside London’s Serpentine Gallery. It’s a work of architecture which leans heavily into the world of art. This year is no exception, thanks to Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his collaborators.

On the face of it, you’d call this a whole load of knitted-together boxes. The structure is 14 metres tall and attains a series of elegant and eye-bending curves, seems to change colour and is more than enough to keep you transfixed. It would be easy to take hundreds of shots.

A lot of people come to the Pavilion and seem to use it as a mesmerising pit stop. So it’s also a great spot for candids and ‘street’ photography, using the structure as very convincing cover. It’s here until 9 October – plenty of time to come and take a look.

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The Photo Shop

West is east

/ mikeosbornphoto / 7 Comments

Damasgate signage

Welcome to my neighbourhood in west London. Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush is a vibrant thoroughfare lined with shops, always thronging with people and filled with the oxygen of everyday life. It’s a multicultural district embracing people from around the world. A glance at some of the shop fronts reveal that the Middle East has left an impression on the area, with elegant signs in Arabic and colourful displays of produce.

In the midst of this is the stately blue of Bush Hall, a music venue with 19th century roots which sits next to the local mosque. Walk further down the road and find a small group of Somali shops, Polish supermarkets, Syrian restaurants, coffee shops, clothes stores – an entire urban community.

Enjoy this pen portrait of just one absorbing London street.

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Syrian bakery

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