(note: you can click the images above for a larger version)

For the last few years, I’ve done an end-of-year review where I go through the photographs I took in the prior 12 months and select my favorites. In most years, I have around 50 after the first pass that deserve a second look, and ultimately have been ending up with around 20 or so that I select and post. This year I started to do the same, but my first pass yielded around 180 images. The bulk of that was from all of the street photography I’d done over a year that included trips to Italy and New York in addition to walking the streets of Raleigh and Durham close to home. I even had a very fruitful trip to Charlotte.

As I tried to carve that 180 down to something more reasonable, I eventually realized I needed to split the street photography from the other photography I produced over the year (mainly concert photography and portrait work). I still had nearly a hundred street photographs that were in contention. My hopes of getting to 20 seemed pointless, and I ultimately relented and decided to post 50 photographs that represent the year. While most of the street photography I did in 2014 was in black-and-white, I also started experimenting more and more in color, so have mixed those in at the end.

It was a really great year of growing in the street photography genre. I had my first street photography exhibit over the summer, at HQ Raleigh as part of the Artspace satellite space. Among my goals for 2015 are to do another show, start submitting to some publications, and perhaps self publish (although more likely I think I’ll start working on a book for the following year). The other goal is to start incorporating some film into my street work. Over the summer I purchased a Leica M3 rangefinder and 50mm lens. I’ve been shooting some (mainly black and white Kodak Tri-X film that I’ve developed and scanned myself), but really want to ramp it up in the new year. I also want to start developing prints in the dark room, something I haven’t done in 30 years. Another big goal is figure out what I want to do about offering limited run, fine art prints that are signed and numbered.

All of the photos shown here are also on display at my gallery site, http://gallery.rodneyboles.com/best_street_2014, which has a full screen slideshow that you can run. You can also see EXIF data on the photos if that sort of thing interest you. I believe all of the photos were taken with my Fujifilm X-series cameras (the X-T1 and X100s). The X100s has been especially great for street photography. With Fujifilm having released a new model, the prices on the X100s represent about the best deal in digital photography. If I could only have one camera and lens, then this little masterpiece would be it. The small size and completely silent shutter make it perfect for being unobtrusive on the street.

I should also note that a few of the photos above were taken in the last week of 2013, after my 2013 list went up. Most of these weren’t post-processed until 2014, anyway, so it seems fair to include them here.