Street Photography Tips, Interaction, Travel, Guides
*City Street Profiles is a series of guides on shooting Street Photography in cities across the world. One of the biggest things I found lacking on the internet was Street Photography info for specific cities so you can be ready to shoot when traveling to a new city. Find the best spots to shoot, what to capture, safety concerns, street tips, and more for cities around the world. (I have personally shot Street Photography in every city that I create a guide for.)
I spent over a week in Kraków and Prague, but didn’t get in as much Street Photography as I would have liked, unfortunately. Bad weather and friends visiting kept me off the streets as much as I had planned. So although I didn’t get as much solid Street Photography done as usual, I still wanted to put together a post of some of the photos I made in both cities.
Kraków and Prague are very different from each other, while still sharing similarities. They share an old world, magical vibe and make for some interesting exploration and scenery on foot. Carrying my camera around, with hands fully gloved due to the cold, made experiencing these cities even more enjoyable.
So here’s 33 photos that I was able to capture during my time in Kraków and Prague…
After Kiev, Lviv and Krakow, the next stop on my Eastern European Street Photography Tour was Prague.
I’ve actually traveled to Prague once before, but it was over 7 years ago. So you might call this 7 First Impressions of Prague in 2016. With how much Prague has recently changed, it felt like going there for the first time in many ways, anyway.
This fairytale of city has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe very quickly over the last decade. There’s plenty of reason why too. There’s really no other city like it. When it comes to Street Photography, though, too much tourism saturation can be a negative at times.
Being a special city like Prague brings both an amazing setting and crowds of people to share it with. So here are my first impressions of Prague, from my personal Street Photographer perspective…
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken by the Charles University Faculty of Arts building in Prague, Czech Republic. I hadn’t been to Prague since my first visit over 7 years ago and I was surprised how much it had changed. I had great memories of being blown away by how beautiful and unique of a city Prague was.
Unfortunately, while it’s still beautiful and unique, it had lost much of it’s charm, in my opinion, due to being overrun with tourism. Segway tours and crowds of people filled the streets, while that authentic feeling I remembered had given way to more of a tourist attraction. It’s still definitely a great city worth visiting, but this usually happens when you have something special like Prague does.
On top of a little nostalgic disappointment, just about my whole time in Prague was dark, grey and very cold. It’s still a fun city to walk around, though, and even with the crowds of tourists, the view of Charles Bridge and Prague Castle is hard to beat. I had just come over from the Prague Castle when out of no where, the clouds parted and let in some sunlight.
I had to take advantage of this temporary moment and noticed how the light was hitting the Charles University Arts building. There’s a covered walkway with arches on the outside that was letting in just a little sunlight. I saw this interesting scholar dressed in all black taking a smoke break with the sunlight hitting only his head. So I walked over and took the shot just as he brought the cigarette to his mouth and glanced at me. A few minutes later, the clouds put the sun back away to never be seen again during my stay. You take what you can get.
