Street photography is actually where this all started for me. I picked up my first camera and lens (Nikon D80 with a 50mm f/1.8D) and drove into a city to take photos of strangers. There's just something special about street photography, and I absolutely love it. It was on the streets of Pretoria that my passion for this craft started to explode.

I've always had a really conventional, traditional approach to it, though. It's always been the usual "Try to steal the shot without the person knowing", or "Take it without asking, even if they see you". That's the normal approach to street work, and that's totally fine. I've gotten some really great shots taking that approach.

For months, I've been wanting to do it differently, and I've decided to start taking a different approach now. I've decided that instead of taking a "Steal the shot without even asking" approach, I'm going to take a "Spend time setting up lighting in a chosen environment and then shoot as if I'm shooting it for a magazine" approach. I want my street photos to have a far more refined, commercial feel, and I've started with this sort of work already. Here's a shot I took yesterday morning:

Now, this particular shot doesn't really capture exactly what I mean, as I had a minute to set up and 15 seconds to shoot, because this lady was in a hurry, but the idea is that I'll put the same effort into every street portrait that I do, that I'd put into a high-end portrait client or model.

I'm excited to see where this goes.