Progressive Street

For me street photography is a matter of finding a visual moment that inspires me to click knowing there’s only one chance to get it right!

I’m Harrie Miller and since 2016 I’ve resided in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been a teacher for longer than I care to admit. I’ve taught across a spectrum of ages and institutions, from Infants children, to Primary, High School, College and adults at University. Prior to teaching I was in the electrical trades and in industrial electronics. Not long ago I worked in two art galleries in Western Australia. Now I try to travel as often as I can to see the many facets of our changing world and its vast and diverse people.

If I deconstruct Webb’s dire statement there are, for me, two parts to contemplate. Me with camera through the lens of my experience and a chance encounter with my star subject in the street, the person I haven’t yet met, and don’t know.

For me street photography is a matter of finding a visual moment that inspires me to click knowing there’s only one chance to get it right! Meandering streets aimlessly can be very rewarding and when I think it’s become tedious I keep going. Why? Because I don’t know what exciting possibility is around the next bend or corner? And how the interplay of my presence, time, light, mood, my feelings and physical position may coincide and contribute to serendipity and that all-important captured candid street scene I’ll consider as worthy and unique to my eye. In essence my camera is a tool which helps me register and fix a moment of life in my immediate place for a considered longer look later and also for offering my view to peers and others in a likeminded world.

Finally, I keep being positive by knowing that the difference between an ordinary shot and a ‘keeper’ is, I think, as Alex Webb intimates, pure luck. And so the more photographs I take the better my chances are of getting an interesting shot will become. And I motivate myself by hoping it’s the next one because, chance and I commingled!

“Street photography is 99.9% about failure.” Alex Webb

Group Exhibitions