On an inclement Perth winter Saturday, I joined a group of UWA foreign exchange students on an urban photo tour of Perth city. ShootPerth is fairly new addition to the scene, seeking to assist the everyday enthusiast to take great photos of the place, its oddities, and its people. Their end goal is to give their participants the ability to document this rapidly changing city; It’s ever growing number of alleyways, artworks, bustling inhabitants and beautiful bogans.

It all started off, for us anyway, at The Bird in Northbridge with a coffee and a masterclass in street photography techniques by our host, British lass Sarah Johnson. She held our hand through the basics of street photography, the techniques and theories that could greatly improve our abilities. After learning the basics of composition and the like, we got into small groups, and using a little map/hotspot guide spent two hours watching the world go by, and every now and then documenting that world, going by. Our map also gave a few little clews and ideas, 5 hints for us to go by and give us some inspiration and guidance.

The map covers a large area, covering Newcastle St at Café 1905 to St Georges Tce at Council House. It includes heaps of the usual interesting things to hit, as well as a bunch of under the radar places, public art installations and interesting art galleries and shops. Obviously in the two hour time frame it would be impossible to see them all, but obviously now that we are in the know and have a good idea of where to go we can use that knowledge another day.

We made our way around Northbridge, trying to see things in a different light, and then capture that light through the lens, which differed greatly from person to person, from phone cameras, point and shoots through to manual DSLR fitouts. After venturing throughout Northbridge we decided to head into the Perth City, however people unfamiliar with the layout of the place could just have easily followed the given maps which clearly labelled great places to land a shot, like the Cultural Centre and the Perth Train Station, all rife with the personalities and the riff-raff.

Upon returning to The Bird, we all submitted our few favourite photos, as well as each team submitting their photo for each of our 5 hints- Wonderwall, It’s A Bug’s Life, Let Me Entertain You, Beauty and the Bogan and a team theme photo. I was absolutely amazed at some of the photos shown in the aftermath, which went down swimmingly with some beers at the bar (including a free pint) and some dim sum from The Bird’s outdoor kitchen corner.

ShootPerth offer a wide variety of tours, ranging in difficulty and timeframes to suite everyone! I would urge anyone with an interest in photography, or even an irking to see and observe the city to check out Shoot Perth’s website and give it a crack.