I went to Glasgow for the street photography, and Glasgow gave me rain.
Not the dramatic kind, just that fine, patient western rain That makes everything shine. By ten o’clock Buchanan street was a mirror.
The buskers had packed up, the shoppers moved faster, heads down, and the whole city turned into reflections.
That’s when it gets good.
I sheltered under the awning of the old central station, camera tucked under my coat, and just watched. A man in a high-vis jacket was eating a sausage roll on his break, completely unbothered, steam rising off his cuppa into the cold air. Two girls in school uniforms were trying to share one umbrella, both getting soaked anyway, laughing at it. A busker with a battered guitar case had decided the rain was his audience now, playing to no one with his hood up.
None of them posed, None of them noticed me. That’s the contract in Street Photography. You don’t take anything from people, you keep something for them.
I walked down towards the Clyde. The river was the colour of tea, moving fast, under the Kingston bridge a cyclist waited out the worst of it, water dripping off his helmet in a perfect rhythm. Click. On Argyle street a newsagent was pulling in his papers before they bled, moving with the calm efficiency of someone who has done this a thousand wet mornings. Click.