The photos, in Ollie's words, lean towards "quiet symmetry". The photo Man on Bike, a particuarly pleasing shot which shows a figure stationary, seemingly pausing to take a call, is often mistaken as staged. According to Ollie, it's "entirely serendipitous". He continues: "I was wandering through Ikoyi when I saw him stop, completely unaware of me, and everything just aligned - the colours, the posture, the stillness."
City streets can feel chaotic, but sometimes everything aligns-light, color, and timing-to create magic. The Chromatic Awards 2024 Amateur Street Photography winners captured 27 such moments, turning sidewalks and markets into cinematic frames. Their images thrive on details: bold hues, instinctive compositions, and shadows that transform ordinary scenes into visual poetry. What makes them powerful is honesty-people caught mid-thought, mid-routine, or mid-connection, frozen in fleeting beauty.
I made this image, Man with Windex, in New York City, in 1996. I was, and remain, obsessed with making photographs on the streets of New York. At that time, I was using a Leica Rangefinder with colour negative film because of its malleability and ease. One of the beautiful things about the Leica is its stealth qualities it is quiet and small, though for me right now the iPhone is my camera.
This year's Street and Travel category winners showcase how color, emotion, and timing can merge to create striking, cinematic moments from places like Lisbon's quiet alleys to Tokyo's electric streets. More than just a competition, the Chromatic Awards honor the art of color photography, welcoming both professionals and passionate hobbyists from around the globe. Each winning image tells a vivid story, capturing raw emotion and transporting viewers to distant cultures and landscapes.
When I first held my uncle Tex's camera, it felt heavier than metal and glass. He'd walked the streets of east London carrying it for decades, capturing a spirit that went overlooked. The mundane became something else when he looked at it. He caught people as they really were: quietly proud, fiercely unique and full of life. His shots were never about glamour or style, although they often had that in spades; They were about connection. You could feel the life in them.
Coincidence is around every corner, and immortalizing a split second of fleeting chaos takes a special eye. Since 2020, Pure Street Photography -an initiative focused on connecting international photographers-has commended visual storytellers through an annual competition. This year's edition drew an impressive 1,160 submissions across 34 countries and five continents. Judged by British writer and curator David Campany alongside founder Dimpy Bhalotia, a total of 147 winning and finalist images were chosen.
The Eyeshot Photography Open Call 2025 reaffirms its status as a premier platform for street and documentary photography, showcasing powerful, award-winning images that reveal the raw pulse of everyday life. From Tokyo's bustling alleys to Havana's quiet corners, each photograph offers an honest, emotionally rich glimpse into moments we often overlook. Curated by a global panel of experts, these works blend technical brilliance with poetic storytelling, capturing fleeting expressions, striking light, and urban geometry.
Gareth McConnell doesn't see things like everyone else. He sees the world in technicolour, as his photographs of wild horses illuminated in neon light and his psychedelic flower arrangements attest. His take on street photography is equally vivid. In his new photo book, Window, published by Sorika, McConnell brings together beautifully grainy crops of scenes from his bedroom window in east London - a supermarket carpark, a funeral car passing by, strangers going about their day.
The ears of Lucky, her chihuahua and miniature pinscher mix, are pictured here, frozen at the sight of a sworn enemy. I have no doubt this cat could take him down! O'Donnell says. We've seen him a few times, monitoring the neighbourhood from this window. The image's slanted sidewalk is very characteristic of hilly San Francisco. I had to back up a bit and crouch down to get the shot, O'Donnell says.
In the Meiji era, when the area was developed from grassland, the model was the streets of London, Okada says. You can still find high-rise buildings that preserve traces of that history.
The 2025 Street Photography Awards by The Independent Photographer once again spotlight the vivid emotion and artistry found in everyday urban life. This year's winners present a rich tapestry of scenes from bustling city chaos to quiet, tender moments, captured with impeccable timing and emotional resonance.
Among its most exciting upgrades is the customizable Film Simulation dial—a first for any X Series camera, allowing users to switch film emulations on the fly.
