Street photography in Barcelona

After a few years of back and forth my wife and I have ended up back in Barcelona, sortof semi permanently, whatever that means, we're not really sure right now. We really like being in Spain, much more than Canada, but we are kind of open to all of europe right now. We also have the idea of spending half our year somewhere exotic like SE Asia and half our year working and living in Spain. It's a thought, but for now we are in Barcelona and really enjoying being back in the Spanish sun and pace of life.

We've been living in small towns and small cities in Canada since we went back about four years ago. We've been yearning for the life and noise and friends we left behind here. It's been a treat for me because I've really been getting into street photography lately but to be honest in Canada it's not very easy. I used to do a lot in downtown Vancouver, but that's a bigger city with more going on. Here in Barcelona there are so many people and so many cool locations that it makes it easy.

I really liked the light bouncing around in this shot. Sometimes it's hard to describe what it is about a particular photo that makes you love it, but you just know it when you see it.

I've been getting a lot of these types of shots lately. It's very common for people to sit on these little ledges in front of shops and garages in my neighbourhood and I just love this weird view of it.

Spain is a very social culture, and I really love seeing how young people take their grandparents out to the public square to get some sunshine or enjoy a coffee, and I love to see elderly people out socializing together.

I particularly like photographing in the metro. You get so many views of people living their lives. Sometimes normal things that you notice, sometimes crazy and fun things that make you shake your head a little bit like a girl balancing a water bottle on her head in the shaky train. It's all life though, and that's what I really like to capture, the little moments, the little glimpses of life going on all around us.

There's a lot of emotion going on down in the metro, and I like to see it. I usually wear my noise cancelling headphones and listen to music because the one thing about the metro here is that it is very noisy, and that is pretty overwhelming to me these days. I think Barcelona's metro might be particularly bad because I know a TON of people here who almost refuse to go into the metro, and a lot more who openly HATE it. It can get pretty hectic down there, but with my noise cancelling headphones on, background noise of rain set to 15% and music playing I usually can't hear any of the noise. Then I can just immerse myself in the music and capture images as I see them happening.

I find it helps to be a bit disconnected from what's going on and the headphones definitely do that for me. I try to take my camera with me now whenever I leave the house because I always regret it when I dont.

Thanks for reading my rants about about Barcelona and photographing in the metro. I'm working on doing regular posts again here on Hive so follow me @dexter-k to see more. I've got a ton of work from the past couple months here in Spain, and even from the past few years that I am stoked to share.