There are dozens of old pictures on the SD card from my Sony RX100, many of them textures and abstracts. With these subjects, I prefer a photo that’s sharp enough to show the small details. Apart from some softness in the corners, the RX100 Mark 1 is possibly sharpest at an f-stop of 5.6. The combination of sensor and multi-coated Zeiss optics is a good match.

There’s something distinctly Australian about rusty sheets of corrugated metal. In wandering around the streets looking for interesting scenes to record, a rather annoyed man asked what I was doing on his property. Though he was behind a fence, it seems that his property extended to what looked like public space. He insisted on this, despite my questions about how the area seemed to be arranged and how one could easily wander onto what he claimed was his turf. In the end, he permitted me to wander a little further as I assured him that I was uninterested in doing anything underhanded. It wasn’t worth the quarrel in the end, and certainly not worth the risk of harm.

The Australian summer can be very harsh. Though winters here are generally quite mild, climate change and extreme weather events notwithstanding, summers can be cruel to humans, animals, and building materials. Still, the combination of rust, metal, wood, and peeling paint is an eye-catcher, even on a cloudy day.

Speaking of clouds: not the greatest days in terms of golden light, but heavy clouds reduce harsh contrasts so that more detail is recorded in photos. Strong cloud-cover also means lower dynamic range, making it easier for the digital sensor to handle the highlights.

All photos were processed from Raw, though I’m keen to cut down on editing time and use a few custom JPG presets. In this context, I’ve set the RX100 to record both Raw and JPG files. This allows me to mess around with picture settings without relying on JPG output alone.

Public and private space

Whilst confrontation is often not worthwhile for photographers, there are certainly times when questioning laws and perceptions of those laws is applicable and useful. Being aware of where public space ends and where private space begins is important for photographers, especially if commercial intent is involved. And sometimes, it’s not clear where the private and public zones are.

Street photography has a long and rich history, but there’s a current cultural climate in which people are sensitive about someone pointing a camera in their direction. I can obstinately pronounce that the law and public space permits me to use my camera in this way, but laws versus people’s feelings is different. It’s also worth considering that there’s a difference between photographing a stranger in public space and being in that public space and photographing the texture of a brick. There’s far greater potential for confrontation in the former example.

I may quote my legal right to photograph strangers on the street, but often the risk of personal harm is not worth the effort to defend one’s rights. There’s also a question around ethics and recording the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society. Where does documentation end and voyeurism begin? The most vulnerable on our streets, dispossessed and struggling, are easily exploited. And is it ethical to exploit the most vulnerable for personal gain? Or should we take the longer view – that all such recording of people’s circumstances contribute to an important historical record?