Studying the Work That Shapes You
A thoughtful, practical guide to studying the photographers who shape you — not through imitation, but through deeper attention. This piece explores how to slow down, study with intention, and choose the artists who stretch your instincts and expand your way of seeing. It’s an invitation to grow with purpose, curiosity, and a clearer understanding of your own evolving style.
Working a Block: Repetition and Variation
A single block can teach you everything you need to know about street photography. Through repetition and variation, the ordinary becomes layered, rhythmic, and alive. This post explores how returning to the same place — at different hours, in different weather, with different intentions — sharpens your instincts, deepens your attention, and turns the street into a quiet collaborator in your creative practice.
A Working Catalogue of Street Photography Styles
A curated guide to the major styles shaping contemporary street photography — from classic documentary to abstraction, humour, minimalism, and painterly colour. This catalogue helps you understand the visual languages available to you, recognize the styles that echo your instincts, and identify the one that will stretch your creative growth. It’s a map for photographers who want to deepen their practice, expand their vocabulary, and evolve with intention.
An Evolving Library of Inspiration: Photographers Who Shape My Way of Seeing
A reflective introduction to the photographers who shape my way of seeing — a living, evolving map of influence that grounds my practice and expands my creative possibilities. This piece invites readers to build their own library of inspiration, study both the masters and contemporary voices, and understand how influence becomes a quiet compass for artistic growth.
What the Image Keeps Silent
A photograph contains only what is visible: light, posture, texture, and the relationships between elements. Everything else — the photographer’s mood, the backstory, the sounds and sensations of the moment — remains outside the frame. This essay explores the discipline of selecting images that communicate on their own terms, without relying on private knowledge, and why that clarity protects both audience trust and the integrity of the work.
Flâneurs’ Lexicon: Presence vs. Living in the Present
Presence and living in the present may sound interchangeable, but they shape our experience in different ways. Presence is the act of truly showing up — attentive, engaged, and awake to what’s unfolding around you. Living in the present is the mindful practice of staying here, letting go of the pull of past and future. For a street photographer, both matter: presence to see the moment, and living in the present to feel it. This reflection explores the quiet difference between the two and why it matters for anyone who walks the world with intention.
Flâneurs’ Lexicon: Modern Flâneur
The flâneur has wandered through centuries — from the quiet, unhurried observer of 19th‑century Paris to the modern wanderer moving gently through today’s fast, digital world. This post explores how that evolution unfolds: how the classic flâneur’s spirit of curiosity and lingering attention becomes something new in the hands of the contemporary walker, photographer, and street poet. It’s an invitation to understand not just how we move through the streets, but how the streets move through us.
The Street Poets Lexicon
The streets speak in subtleties — a glance, a gesture, a moment that almost slips past. Over time, I’ve gathered the words that help me make sense of these fleeting encounters. This “Vocabulary of the Streets” is a small collection of those ideas: the concepts that shape how I walk, how I see, and how I photograph the world unfolding around me.
Finding Time to Create Again
A personal reflection on rebuilding a creative life after loss—balancing street photography, poetry, writing, research, and new websites. Introducing Cleroux.com, along with upcoming workshops, community projects, and resources for street photographers.