It has been seven years since I started doing street photography. I was a late bloomer. I started at 37 years old in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 26, 2019. In April 2020, right during COVID, I moved to Santa Monica, where I am today.

I’ve been taking photographs ever since. At this point, I’m probably somewhere around 700,000 or 800,000 shutter clicks. It’s crazy to think about how many photographs I’ve made.

It got me thinking about the mistakes I’ve made along the way. If I were starting over today, would I do the same things?

The answer is a hard no.

I’ve learned quite a bit over these seven years. I think I finally figured out a routine that works for me at the beginning of 2026. I’ve been following essentially the same process ever since, and I’ve never felt more productive or fulfilled by photography.

I don’t really care about building a following or making money from it. I’m just churning away in the background, making as many photographs as possible. There’s basically no pressure. I can do whatever the hell I want.

So if I were starting street photography again today, here’s what I would do differently.

STICK WITH ONE CAMERA

I’d pick one small camera and stick with it.

Nothing bigger than something like a Ricoh GR. Honestly, even a cheap point-and-shoot would work. You don’t need much for street photography.

I’d shoot that camera until it died.

The point isn’t having the best camera. The point is becoming completely familiar with the camera you have and its focal length.

My Ricoh GR III is still more camera than I need for street photography. I don’t need something better.

At this point, I find most camera gear talk pretty unfulfilling. I’d rather spend that time looking at photographs and making photographs.

GET RID OF THE OUTSIDE INFLUENCE

The second thing I’d do is get rid of social media.

I wouldn’t want outside influences shaping my photography. I wouldn’t want to hunt for likes, and I especially wouldn’t want likes determining which photographs I make.

I wouldn’t want my photography to look like everyone else’s photography.

I’d probably keep YouTube because there is genuinely useful information about photography there, but I’d be selective about what I watched.

What interests me now are photographers with long bodies of work. People who have made books and magazines and have spent decades photographing. I want to hear them talk about why they make photographs and what keeps them going.

That’s far more interesting to me than hearing about the latest camera.

SHOOT RUTHLESSLY

The next thing I’d do is shoot a lot.

If I were starting again, I’d probably give myself a ridiculous goal like 500 photographs a day for an entire year.

I’d shoot JPEG. For me, that would mean high-contrast black and white.

Then I’d edit ruthlessly.

When I get home from photographing, I load everything onto my computer and move through the photographs quickly, usually looking at them around thumbnail size.

I try to eliminate as much as possible.

My loose rule is:

KEEP 5%. PUBLISH 1%.

So if I make 500 photographs, maybe I keep 25.

Then maybe five of those go into a bucket of potential photographs for my magazine.

If I’m making around 15,000 photographs in a month, only a tiny fraction of them will ultimately end up being published.

And I’m completely fine with that.

GIVE THE PHOTOGRAPHS SOMEWHERE TO GO

This has become one of the biggest things for me.

I need an output.

Right now that output is my Survey magazine series.

Every month I’m accumulating photographs and pulling the ones I think work together into a magazine. I’m not trying to fill it entirely with “bangers,” either.

I think about the magazine almost like a printed video.

If you’re watching a movie, you don’t want something exploding every second. You need downtime. You need rhythm.

That’s how I think about the magazine.

There are photographs of people, objects, shadows, landscapes, plants, architecture, and whatever else catches my attention. I’m trying to put all of those things together into something larger.

The physical magazine has also become important to me.

I can leave one on my desk, walk past it, pick it up, flip through five or ten photographs, and put it back down.

That’s enough.

I don’t need somebody else to validate it. I don’t need somebody to buy it. Just having a physical output for all these photographs gives me a reason to keep going.

So my plan is pretty simple:

MAKE AS MANY PHOTOGRAPHS AS POSSIBLE. MAKE AS MANY MAGAZINES AS POSSIBLE. IF OPPORTUNITIES COME FROM THAT, GREAT. IF THEY DON’T, THAT’S OKAY TOO.

I love the process of being curious and taking photographs.

PHOTOGRAPH MORE THAN PEOPLE

When I look through my older archive, I notice that almost everything is a photograph of a person.

And honestly, I find a lot of that work boring now.

These days, I photograph people, shadows, objects, plants, landscapes, and whatever else I’m curious about.

When something interests me, I photograph it.

Then I get closer.

Then farther away.

I move to the side. I go around the back. I change the angle of the camera. I keep working the subject from every possible direction.

I might make 100 photographs of one thing.

Then I can come home, look through them, and realize none of them worked.

Fine. Delete them.

I don’t care because I’ll find something else tomorrow.

Photography has become this endless process of staying curious about something and photographing it in as many different ways as possible.

That’s something I wish I’d understood much earlier.

DON’T WORRY SO MUCH ABOUT HOW OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOOT

Another mistake I made was looking too closely at how other street photographers worked.

For a long time, I thought street photography was primarily about photographing people. I was influenced by that classic close-up documentary approach.

After several years of primarily photographing people, I realized that wasn’t enough for me.

I find my newer work more fulfilling because I can photograph an entire area. I can put people next to objects, landscapes, shadows, and random details and eventually construct something that feels like a larger visual story.

I’d tell my younger self to spend less time figuring out how street photography is “supposed” to look.

I’d spend more time figuring out what I’m actually interested in looking at.

I’D STAY DIGITAL

I also wouldn’t spend time shooting film if I were starting again.

For a new photographer, instant feedback is incredibly useful.

I want to make photographs, come home that same day, go through them, see what worked, see what didn’t work, and go out again.

It’s a constant feedback loop.

That’s incredibly valuable when you’re trying to learn.

Film might make sense for somebody who already knows exactly what they want, but for the way I work, digital makes much more sense.

I particularly love the black-and-white JPEGs from the Ricoh. They’re already giving me the aesthetic I’m looking for without adding another step to the process.

I’d rather spend my time making photographs.

I’D PHOTOGRAPH IN A WAY THAT FITS MY PERSONALITY

There was also a period where I was trying to photograph like Bruce Gilden.

I’d get extremely close to people with a flash.

Looking back, I actually like some of those photographs. I also genuinely like Bruce Gilden’s photography.

But that way of working isn’t me.

I’m not interested in creating unnecessary confrontation just to make a photograph.

These days, I prefer working in a much more discreet, low-friction way.

Ideally, I want to move through the world photographing what catches my attention without becoming part of the scene myself.

I don’t want to change what’s happening.

I just want to document what I see.

That fits my personality much better, and I think figuring that out has been an important part of figuring out my photography.

WHAT I’D TELL MYSELF ON DAY ONE

If I could go back to September 2019 and talk to myself on my first day of street photography, I’d keep the advice pretty simple:

Pick one camera and use the hell out of it.

Stop worrying about gear.

Get away from social media and outside validation.

Make an enormous number of photographs.

Edit ruthlessly.

Photograph everything that interests you, not just people.

Experiment with every possible way of photographing something.

Learn from your photographs as quickly as possible.

Find an output for the work.

Don’t worry so much about making photographs the way somebody else says you’re supposed to make them.

Above everything else, stay curious and keep photographing.

That’s really what it’s about for me now.