StreetSnappers - The Street Photography Podcast S1 E2

Street photography doesn’t get better by accident; it gets better by intention. I kick off the Street Photography Podcast with a few ideas for a stronger creative year: study one great photo book each week, finish the projects that keep drifting, and lock down an archive strategy that actually protects your work. From a decade-long black-and-white Venice project to a living zine series on London streets, I share the real timelines and choices behind sustaining momentum without losing heart.

The Q&A digs into a key gear question. If you’re weighing autofocus modes on a Leica Q3 (or any 28 mm setup), hear why simple Field AF and classic zone focus still win on the street, and why a Leica Q3 a firmware update is essential. Then we go straight at a thorny craft topic: is photographing the backs of people a lazy dodge or a legitimate tool for mystery? Drawing on Joel Meyerowitz and Saul Leiter, we show how ambiguity can hand the story to the viewer - if intent leads the frame.

We toss a “hand grenade” at overused street tropes - spiral staircases, umbrellas, silhouettes, misted bus windows - and offer practical ways to step out of the echo chamber. To ground it, we bring you a quick Street Session from Liverpool with Robin, a colour-driven eye balancing lunchtime walks, a pocket Ricoh and a 100-year-old film project. Then it’s time to build your desert island bookshelf: Sergio Larrain’s London 1959, Eggleston’s Guide, Fred Herzog’s Modern Color, Chris Killip’s 'best', and more, each a masterclass in seeing.

We close with scene-wide updates: platform shifts toward “authentic” imagery, a new GR4 Monochrome announcement, festival calls, and exhibitions worth your time. If you want to sharpen your vision, finish the work that matters, and break free of copycat frames, you’re in the right place. 

Subscribe, download, and share your thoughts with me - what cliché are you quitting this year, and which book is shaping your eye?

For my workshop information, including the Venice workshops I mentioned, please visit www.streetsnappers.com

Transcript

Host Intro And Show Setup

Resolutions: Books, Projects, Backup

Q&A: Leica Q3 Autofocus Choices

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Well it's now January 2026, and it's about 18 months since I tried to start this show, but we are finally there. So a very warm welcome to the first episode or the first proper episode of Street Snappers, the show for street photographers. So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about my Desert Island photo books. I'm going to share a couple of my New Year's resolutions with you. I'll take some of your questions. We'll have a look at a few bits of news from the world of street photography, and I'll bring you into the first of a regular series called The Street Sessions, where I do a quick vox pop interview with street photographers, just like you, I meet out there on the streets. If we don't already know each other, I'm Brian Duckett and uh I run an organization called Street Snappers. I'm a professional documentary and street photographer. I run workshops, I write books, I lecture on the subject. So street street and documentary photography is pretty much my life. You may have already seen my YouTube channel. If you haven't just search for Street Snappers, but I'm completely new to this audio stuff, and that means that in these early days there will be loads of mistakes. So please bear with me and don't judge me too harshly for them. But I don't mind if you have a bit of a chuckle at my expense, I can take it. So here we are, a few weeks into the new year, and I just looked at my diary note for New Year's resolutions, and I thought, why not? I'll share some of these with you. So my first resolution is all about books, and specifically the fact that I don't spend enough time looking at the books I've already bought. And I th we we all do this, don't we? We you know we see a book advertise or in the bookshop or looking at Facebook or Amazon or something, and we see a book and we thought, ooh yeah, I'm gonna have that. And then we buy it and then it sits on the shelf. So looking at the books on the shelf in my sitting room now, I can see so many photo books, and some of them are just unread. How criminal is that? I need to read them. So I've decided to have a book of the week, one book which I'll really spend time getting to know and understand. I've come to the conclusion that it's no good having all these books just looking pretty on the shelf and just dipping to them, dipping into them only occasionally. So it's my plan this year to really get under the skin of one photography book or one street photography book every week. Wish me luck. And I'm now staring at this week's book, which is uh it's actually not street photography, but it's uh it's a wonderful book, and it's portraits by William Eggleston. Uh more about him a bit later in the show. Uh but when I put the mic down later, I'll be picking this up and getting stuck in. So my second resolution is nothing about books, but I'm going to commit to finishing a couple of projects. Maybe three. The first is a black and white project in Venice, which has been oh ten years in the making. Who said projects need to be short? And this will be a big coffee table book. It's been a labour of love for so long now, and I keep trying to finish it, but then I'll go to Venice Venice again and I'll find some more images for it. I don't know if this happens to you, but it's so tempting to go on and on. And sometimes we just need to close the lid on it and call time on it and say, enough's enough, I've got enough now, I'm gonna publish. And I so I think that's what I'll be doing in March. I've got two more trips to Venice between now and March, now being mid-January. Uh so we'll see what happens, and you'll be the first to know when it uh when it's actually published. The other or the next project is uh all about life in German Street, which is in the St. St James area of London. And uh this is a really characterful area, it's very elegant and stylish with lovely shops, quite it's got quite a sort of timeless feel to it, nostalgic feel, and there's there's a lovely aesthetic, a lovely atmosphere to this area. And I've been working on this for a couple of years now, and I think I'm almost ready to go with a zine. I certainly will be by the end of this year. And then the third project is uh some of you may know that I published uh a zine called The Ditch about a year, 18 months ago, all about life in Shoreditch in East London, and I'm currently working on volume two of that. So keep your eyes open for this one, it'll be for sale at some point this year. Projects is a big thing for me, and anybody who knows me will attest to that. It's uh a big part of my life. I don't shoot many standalone uh one-hit wonder images, although they certainly do have a place, but my life is pretty much driven by projects. My third resolution is to sort out my archive, storage, and backup. It's a nightmare. The way it is now, it's actually quite chaotic, and this worries me, so I'm gonna look at a combination of on-site, off-site, and cloud-based storage to give me a triple whammy of protection and reassurance. Now I lost much of my archive of negatives and some prints in a flood at my parents' house 20 years ago, and I just can't afford to let that sort of thing happen again. I also lost my great collection of records in that flood, or you some of you won't know what records are, hipsters call them vinyls. Uh totally irreplaceable. But hey ho, life goes on, onwards and upwards. I won't make that mistake again. I'm still thinking through the options for storage and trying to work out a strategy, and when I'm there with it, I'll be back on here and I'll share it with you in a future episode. So, you know, maybe we can uh do a bit of sharing of best practice. So there you have it. That's what I'm be aiming for this year. Wish me luck. Okay, let's go to some questions. And the first one is from Michael. Uh go for it, Michael.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Hello, Brian. It's Michael from Norfolk here. Great podcast, by the way. Looking forward to future ones being published. So my question, and this one is in relation to the Leica Q3, twenty eight millimeter. Having recently purchased this Leica and looking forward to using it, I was wondering about the best autofocus mode. As having looked through lots of different YouTube videos and read articles online, there's a bit of a contradiction as to whether spot, field, zone, or tracking is the best. I just thought I'd ask you to get your opinions on what you felt.

Q&A: Shooting People’s Backs

SPEAKER_03 7:30

So Michael's question is all about the Leica Q3, but the same principles apply here to most digital cameras. Well, I I think the autofocus modes are uh a very personal thing, and I would always say use whatever works best for you. We all work in different ways, and what works best for me may not work best for you. Personally, I use the field mode uh on Likers, which gives me that small green box in the viewfinder. I've probably used this mode since autofocus first became a thing. What can I say? I always know where I am with it. I've experimented with most of the others, including the one where you have the various boxes jumping around, uh, but I never feel 100% confident with that, and I've certainly missed focus too many times using that. As for tracking, it just doesn't suit the wire work, and I'm not sure that's really cut out for street photography, to be honest. But I do think there's a very slight issue with Lykers and autofocus generally, in that it's not very good. Now I love Lycers to bits, but I really do think they need to spend a bit more time on getting the AF sorted out. It just feels like it's two or three years behind everything else and it's not quite zippy enough. Having said that, if I'm using a 28mm lens, like on your Q3 Michael, or on whatever camera actually, if I'm using 28mm or wider, I'll be zone focusing 90% of the time. It's a no-brainer. I know that works really well with with your particular lens, uh, assuming you're you're shooting at say f8 or f11. It just works. So to recap, I'd recommend using the field AF mode, which is the quickest and the most reliable for me. But what I would add, Michael, is that if you haven't already done so, definitely install the new, brand new 4.0 firmware for that camera. It makes a substantial difference to how the camera operates, and there is quite a significant upgrade to the AF performance. Before we go to the next question, I'd love to have a question from you. All you need to do is get your phone out and record a brief message using the Voice Notes app or the Voice Memo or whatever your phone calls it. Just say your first name, where you're from, then the question, and then if you want me to mention it, you add your Insta handle. If you don't fancy doing it this way, you could always just email me the question in the old-fashioned way and as a text, you know, a kind of normal message, and I'll just answer it, I'll read it out and answer it that way. But I much prefer the personal approach. But either way, I really want to have your questions. So the next question is from Nigel. Q Nigel.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Nigel from East Yorkshire. My question is I'm never quite sure about taking photos of the back of people. Is this acceptable street photography?

The Hand Grenade: Street Clichés

The Street Sessions: Robin In Liverpool

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Great question, Nigel. And I'm gonna be quite obtuse and say no. How could you even think about shooting people's backs? Now I'm overgeneralizing for emphasis and effect here, and there are always exceptions, of course, which I'll come on to in a minute. But as a general rule, I think it's best avoided. I think it's a bit of a cop out, it's low-hanging fruit, an easy win. It just feels a bit cheap. We've all seen these pictures on Instagram, a bloke walking down the street, shot from behind. Can you imagine a more boring photo? Unless and there are always exceptions to a rule unless there are good reasons for doing it. And it's certainly something Joel Marawitz did. He actually said, and I'm gonna quote him here I'm very interested in photographing the backs of people. The back is a mystery. You don't know who they are, where they're going, what they're thinking. I wish I could have done that in Joel's accent, but I'm not very good at accents. But I think he has a valid point here, and I do love street photography that has an element of intrigue or mystery, just causing the viewer's mind to do a little extra work. Another great proponent of shooting people's backs was Saul Lighter, of course, and he he took a similar line on this. He said I like the backs of people. I like the feeling of mystery. Now this is a very lighter statement, understated, slightly evasive, but it fits perfectly with his way of photographing people as shapes, as colours, as presences, rather than as identities. He wasn't bothered about people's faces. He would say faces explain too much, whereas the backs leave space for ambiguity. And I think that Leiter quote quietly justifies turning away from the obvious moment and trusting atmosphere instead. Now there's a thought. But I think it's fair to say both Leiter and Morawitz valued ambiguity in street photography. And they would say that turning away from the camera, or turning people away from the camera, removes expression, removes identity, and it actually hands the narrative over to the viewer. For us street photographers, it's a great reminder that withholding information can be a really powerful tool, and it's something I have to keep reminding myself of. You know, it's a great little device you can deploy sometimes. So back to my answer to Nigel's question, and the answer is yes, I think it can be okay to shoot people's backs, but there needs to be some purpose, there needs to be some artistic intent behind it. Don't do it because you can't be bothered getting in front of them, or because you don't feel comfortable getting in front of them. Do it for good reason. Right, this segues me nicely into what will become a regular feature on the show, and I make no apologies for the fact that I can be a wee bit opinionated at times. So here's the hand grenade slot. I've actually got in my hand at the moment a British Army hand grenade, and I'm gonna pull out the pin, metaphorically speaking, of course, here you can hear the pin rattling there, and I'm gonna lob it at something I want to have a good rant about. But don't worry, the pin will stay firmly in place and no children or animals will be harmed during this little rant. So this week's hand grenade is directed at street photography cliches or tropes. We see them all the time, especially on Instagram, and I think this is really about lack of originality, and probably lack of imagination. We're artists, we're meant to be creative people. We shouldn't be shooting cliches. What do I mean by cliche? Well it's a subject, a scene, or a stylistic approach that's been photographed so often and in such predictable ways that it just feels overused, over original, sorry, unoriginal, formulaic. By way of example, you could look at some images we often see shot by people in London, and it's the picture of the blurry person on the spiral staircase in the Tate Modern. It's the view of the city from underneath Blackfriars Bridge, it's the graffiti artist in the Leak Street tunnel, it's the picture taken at pavement level outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, clearly aping Matt Stewart's great picture of the pigeon, or it's the picture of some random bloke shot through a mist it up bus window, clearly aping Nick Turpin's great work on the night bus. So be honest with yourself. Are you guilty of shooting cliche shots? If so, you need to think about stopping it. Most of us have been guilty of this at some point, and it's all part of the learning process. I don't take that away from you. However, the cliche shock doesn't provide the basis for a long-term career, let's call it, for your long-term development as a street photographer. It's a bit of a creative culzy sack, and we must be able to find our way out of it. We all get in it at some stage, me included, but we have to get out of it. Now, I mention all this, this is all slightly tongue in cheek, of course. Uh but it's also a kind of provocation for you, a call to action. Time for you to stop, think, reflect, ask yourself, how much of your own work could be cliched? Maybe a lot of it is, and maybe you're happy with that, which is absolutely fine. You know, I'm the first person to say that you do this for you, you don't do it for other people, you don't do it for strangers on Instagram, you do it for you. And if you're happy with it, then you know, fine. But it will only take you so far. Now we we find cliches lurking around every corner, and they provide just easy opportunities to recycle old ideas. It's easy meat. We see them all the time on Instagram. The silhouette of somebody in a hat, the homeless person reaching out, uh the umbrella shot in the rain, a person in a red coat with a red bus in the background. Now I'm not saying that any of these subjects are necessarily bad per se. And yeah, you'll find plenty of classic street images which fall into these categories. I mean look at Saul Leiter's classic shot of the it's almost a monochromatic shot that has a red umbrella in it. And many of us start our street photography journeys shooting this stuff. I'm sure I did, and I probably still occasionally do. But we do need to know when to call time on it and move on. Cliches become cliches when they're done without any fresh perspective, new context, original intention, personal vision. Think of a cliche as being repetition without originality. Try to get out of it. I'm not trying to point the finger here, I'm just simply asking you to just think, stop, think, pause, reflect, and consider your own work in this context. It may just be time to move up a gear. Sometimes when I'm walking the streets, I'll have in my hand a microphone and I'll be looking for other street photographers, just like you, to take part in a quick vox pop interview for the show. I'm I call it the street sessions. And recently on the streets of Liverpool, very fine city for street photography, I bumped into Robin, who I do know, and I asked him a few quick fire questions. Here we go. So I'm in Liverpool, and I just bumped into a street photographer called Robin, who I do actually know. Now, Robin I know is from Formby, which is a very beautiful place on the northwest coast, and uh I'm just gonna ask him a few questions about his street photography. So, first of all, Robin, what brings you to Liverpool today and what's on your agenda for today's shooting? What are you looking for?

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Well, I work in Liverpool City Centre, uh so I'm uh come out on my lunch times every day. I've always got my trusty GR3X in my hand just to see what I spot. So my lunchtime wanderings are usually about half an hour to 40 minutes, which isn't really long enough for me to really get into the zone, but I have a few ideas in my head. One of which a friend gave to me was to lean into the lunch times and just spot lunchtime people and see what they're doing on the streets, uh how they spend their lunch times. Other than that, I tend to just keep an eye out for sort of city backgrounds and juxtapositions and any special happenings that I spot as I go by.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Great. Leaning into the lunch times, I love that. I've spent a career doing leaning into the lunchtimes and it hasn't always ended well, I've got to say. So what is street photography to you? What what how do you how do you interpret it? How do you define street photography?

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Well I've been doing it for probably probably seriously for about two or three years, um, since I did a street snappers uh workshop with yourself. I I always like to try and find juxtapositions and if I can the the moment as it were, um, but they they don't come by very often. I've I've found myself going generally recently. I seem to be sort of seeing a bit of a a voice in my work, and it tends to be more about the surroundings rather than the people or the surroundings with the people. So it's more city textures, city graphics, um how people fit into their environment, uh colours. I'm very much a colour person. I'm a graphic designer by trade, so I always see colours and patterns. So that's that's sort of where my eye tends to go, and I'm sort of seeing that in my work now.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Great. So finding a voice, I mean, this is what most people really struggle with, and you see if you're starting to see a voice emerge, that's really good. So, what about projects? What are you working on at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Um, I tend to have lots and lots of projects going on, and I sort of see something and I take a photograph of it going, that'll be a good project, and I'll never see one of them for an for another year or so. Um, but I've got my lunchtime project, I've got one called Man About Town, which is sort of a modern take on people shopping, men shopping, maybe looking a bit fed up, um being dragged around, having heavy bags on them, that sort of thing. Um as I say, colours and graffiti, graphics, textures, that sort of thing. Um, yeah, I've got a project in my mind which I'm trying to get going, which is a using a vintage camera that's about a hundred years old and it takes 120 film, and trying to get some sort of correlation between photographs today and that would be never have been seen a hundred years ago. So it's sort of people, it's culture, fashion, things that we take for granted, like telephone boxes that are all going to rack and ruin, but somebody 100 years ago would never have seen them. So I'm trying to take photographs like that on a vintage camera on 120 roll film and just see what sort of develops from there. Sounds great. So bringing it back to the the present day, what gear are you using?

SPEAKER_03 22:38

What are you using today?

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Uh Rico GR3X, which I love because it just fits straight into my pocket. Um I I just take that around with me everywhere I go. It's either in my pocket or in my hand, switched on, ready to go if I see something. If I come out at night time, I tend to use a Nikon Z62 purely because it's uh better night uh ISOs and things, but generally it's the Rico.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah, I can uh I see where you're coming from with that. I think the little Rico is a great camera, but just not brilliant at low light, and I think your Nikon will really perform in low light, I guess. Okay, so tell me about books. What are you reading at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Uh I've recently bought the Magnum contact sheets because I love to see um the other shots as well and how the photographers have picked their shots and cropped into frames and used used their eye to to pick out things there. That's a great one. My go-to book for reference is probably Matt Stewart's book. What's that one called, Brian?

SPEAKER_03 23:40

Is it Think Like a Street Photographer? The little book. Really good book, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, that one. Um I uh I like that one. Um and also stuff about Vivian Meyer. My daughter bought me a book on uh women street photographers, which has got some great stuff in there. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

So one street photographer, dead or alive, you would love to spend tomorrow with.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Well, he's still alive, um, and it is Matt Stewart. I think there's a sort of connection there between his work and and what I try to do. So I like his eye and he's he's done some uh great shots, so I'd like to spend some time with him.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah, I think that's a great choice. And having seen a couple of the zines you've done recently, I can I can see the uh the the similarities between your work and his. So yeah, great choice. Okay, so finally, where where can people see your work? Where if somebody wants to look at uh what Robin does, how how can they find you?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Well, I'm I'm most uh visible on um Instagram. My Instagram tag is photo rob62, so you can tell how old I am. But yeah, I tend to post on there mainly and I tend to be quite selective what I post on there. I don't put everything on, I tend to just use that as my window for for my good stuff. Brilliant. Robin, thank you so much.

Desert Island Photo Books

News: Gear, Exhibitions, Workshops

What’s Next And How To Support

SPEAKER_03 25:00

It's been really good chatting, and uh hope to see you again soon. Bye for now. Thanks, Brian. Bye for now. So if you see me on the streets and you fancy taking part in this, do stop me and ask me if I and if I have the audio gear on my bag, we'll do a quick street session. It'll take five minutes, it's a bit of fun, and you might just get your name out there. Let's come back to books. We'll be talking quite a bit about books on this show, and it's such a pity I can't show them to you, but uh we all know what books like, you'll and you'll have to imagine what these specific ones look like. Over Christmas I made uh just for fun a list of my favourite street photography or photography books, my top ten, and I call these my desert island books. Now this isn't meant to be a fixed list, it's quite fluid, and it'll change from time to time. And what I did, I just had a bookshelf dedicated to my ten desert island books. If I were stranded on a desert island tomorrow, and actually that's not such a terrifying prospect given the sad state of affairs in the UK at the moment, but there are books I'd want to have at my side. And here they are, in no particular order. Uh well actually the the first one is in a particular order because this will this will be number one, and it's called London 1959 by Sergio Lorraine. Now Lorraine was uh an early Magnum photographer, and he shot this body of work in London, uh in black and white in 1959, and it is gorgeous. The the the book just I I can't put this book down and keep getting more out of it. It keeps giving. It's very atmospheric, very grainy. You've got the fog and the smog in London, real kind of nostalgic feel, obviously, because it was shot in 1959. Uh the old London taxis, the old cars, the way people dressed, the way people looked. It was just fantastic. It's just such a lovely book, and it's you know it's been reprinted so many times, it's available now. London 1959, Sergio Lorraine. Top of the list. My next book is also a black and white one, and it's a Bruce Gilden book called Lost and Found. Now, I'm not a massive fan of Bruce Gilden, I've got to say, but I do admire him and respect what he's done, and he is certainly an influential voice in this world. But I I do think that his earlier work I much prefer it to his his more recent work, and Lost and Found is a collection of more classic street photography than the inclusive uh sorry, not inclusive, what am I talking about? The invasive, intrusive in-your-face stuff that he does now. Uh, just a great collection of images, good street photography. My third book is probably not street photography in the classic sense, and it's by another book by William Eggleston, and it's called Guide. And this was his first uh popular book, if you like, and it's great because what you have a lot of in this book is just pictures of ordinary things, and it's all about beauty in the mundane. There are some pictures of people, but there are plenty of pictures that don't have people, and it's a great example to prove the point that we don't necessarily need people in street photography. Lovely book, lovely colour, lovely soft filmic colour. Fabulous. My next book is from the British documentary photographer Chris Killip, and it's called 1946 to 2020, and it's a collection of his life's work, really. Now I saw the exhibition that went alongside this book in the photographer's gallery in London about a year ago, 18 months ago, and it was fantastic. And having seen the pictures on the wall, I just had to run to the bookshop and buy the book. You won't find many better examples of fairly contemporary documentary photography. It's just wonderful. Real stories in here. My next book is another black and white book, the Chris Killip book, by the way, is all black and white. The next one is one of those little Hoxton mini press books that cost next to nothing. And this one's called The London Pub. And it's archive material of black and white shots taken in London pubs in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and it's just lovely. It's just great to see how people behaved in those days, what they were wearing, what they did, what pubs looked like. And I just love pubs anyway. So this is just a great book. I just keep seeing more things, new things in all the pictures in here. My next book is something completely different, and it's Fred Herzog's Modern Colour. Now, Fred was a Canadian street photographer who shot the streets of I think Vancouver for most of his life. And this book is an exercise in how to use colour. It's just beautiful. There's a lovely aesthetic here. It's quite easy to draw parallels between some of these images and some of Saul Lighter's images. Modern colour is just a masterpiece and it's not expensive. I'd thoroughly recommend it. My next book is completely different, and it's by the Japanese photographer Tatsuo Suzuki, and it's called Friction. Now, Suzuki has he's he's a bit like a kind of Tokyo's version of Bruce Gilden, and that he is quite in your face, up close and personal. Friction is a black and white book. It was published by Steidel, and it's a lovely book. It's on lovely uncoated paper, thick uncoated paper. Even the ink smells nice. It it is black and white close up street photography of people. Now, Suzuki, if you don't know the story, he was a Fujifilm ambassador in in Japan, and Fujifilm sacked him because they thought his approach was a bit too I keep saying inclusive, a bit too intrusive, and didn't reflect well on the Fujifilm brand. Now I think they were a bit hasty there. I think you know his work is is actually very, very good. And I think if anybody were thinking about buying an X100, which is what he used, he was a very good advert for that camera. But hey ho, it's a great book. The next one is more of a classic, and it's Joel Meirawitz, and it's his greatest hits compilation, and it's called Where I Find Myself. Now, this is a huge book, thick, heavy, and I was actually given this book by uh a lovely guy who came on a workshop with me years ago, and as a thank you, he sent me this book all the way from Australia. Thanks so much, John. I just love this book. Anyway, all Joel's work is in here from his early classic stuff in New York in the 60s and 70s through to the Cape Cod bits of the Cape Cod project, some of his still life, uh, some more landscapy stuff, some portraits. It just really gets you into the into the heart and the mind of the man. Wonderful. My next one is a similar sort of book, really, in that it's a bit of a greatest hits thing, and it's Martin Parr, a fairly recent book called Utterly Lazy and Inattentive, which is a phrase that Martin picked from one of his early school reports, and it could actually quite easily have come from one of my school reports. But a lot of Martin's great pictures and some narrative about him and his life and how he worked on the facing page. So you have a picture on the right, text on the left, nice thick book. It's it's uh it's lovely. And my final book is another black and white documentary book by Daniel Meadows, and it's called Book of the Road. Now, Daniel spent much of his life on the road, all around England, the southwest, the north, and this is a strange-shaped book in that it's very tall and quite thin. But it's wonderful. There there's a lot of words, a lot of narrative in this book about Daniel and his life, and what motivated him and what drove him to shoot and so on. And it's fascinating to see how he lived. He actually had an old double decker bus, like the old like a London routemaster, the old style double decker bus. And that was his home. It was his gallery, his studio, and his dark room. What a great way to live. Now I've been trying to persuade Mrs. D to let us have a double decker bus so I can do this and just swan off round the country for months on end. But she ain't too happy. Anyway, those are my current top ten Desert Island books. It'll be interesting to look at that list again in six months' time and just see how it changes, if it does. Anyway, have a think about your Desert Island discs uh books and maybe dedicate a bit of shelf space to those. And think about changing them over time. Let's go to some news. Here's a quick roundup from the world of street photography, the latest news, trends, exhibitions, awards, community news and projects and stuff that's shaping the scene right now. First of all, some news from Instagram, whose photographic identity is reported to be shifting. Platform head Adam Mosseri publicly said that traditional polished photos are now boring, and he's pushing more candid, authentic content. Now I'm not entirely sure yet what the implications of this are for us, or even what he means by authentic, I'm not sure that even knows that himself. But this could change how we street photographers share our work and how we build audiences online. It could be quite an important development. It still seems to be a moving feast, and those of us who are Instagrammers, I think we need to make sure that we keep keep up to date with this and watch the developments and just see how they affect us over time. For Rico fans, the big news is that a monochrome only version of the GR4 has just been announced. Now this has a built-in physical red filter which applies the filtration optically rather than normally with these things through processing. It has the same 25 point something megapixel CMOS sensor size from the previous model, and everything will be complete, everything else will be completely familiar to GR4 or even GR3 or GR2 owners. Now I know that lots of people have been anxiously waiting for this, and I'm pretty certain demand will outstrip supply. In the UK, WEX has it on pre-order for about 1600 quid. Hmm. BH has it at similar kind of price in dollars in the States, I think. What's your view on monochrome only cameras? The jewelry's out for me, but I think if I shot only in black and white, then they're probably a great idea. I'll try to get my hands on one of these for a quick road test and I'll report back to you when I know more. A bit of workshop news from me. I've just launched a couple of winter workshops in Venice this year, uh, which will be in November and December, and they're already over half full. So if you fancy coming along, don't leave it too long. Just head to streetsnappers.com. If you're entering competitions, there's an open call for entries into the Belfast Street Photography Festival, which is at Belfast PhotoFestival.com, and you have until March 2nd to get your entries in. In terms of exhibitions on at the moment, the Taylor Wessing Prize is on at the National Portrait Gallery until April. February the 8th, not April. I know it's not exactly street photography, but I always do find it quite interesting, uh, because I do shoot street portraits sometimes, uh, and I think it's always worth a look. And then the Lee Miller exhibition is still running at Tate Britain until February the 15th. Again, worth a look. Well, that just about wraps it up for today's show. My plan is to alternate podcasts with YouTube videos, and I aim to have one or the other available for you every two weeks. If you're not familiar with my YouTube channel, just search for Street Snappers and you'll find lots of lots of uh more visual content. So in future episodes of the podcast, you can expect more content like this, and also interviews, uh, I'll be talking about locations, I'm gonna factor in some regular assignments for you to get stuck into, and lots more. And behind all this, the show notes page on the website will start to develop. It's a little bit skeletal at the moment, but it will develop. It's still very early days for the show, and I'll be working on ironing out the rough edges and packing every episode full of interesting content for you. So please do follow the show on whatever platform you use. Please download it. I think the download metrics are quite important to the show's growth. I'm not sure why, but I think it'll be a great help. Right, I'm off to the pub. Bye for now, you know.