Photography
In This Section
About
Street photography is more than an art; it's a world view. The act of taking a photo records not only an image, but a perception. Photos are an avenue to connect with objects and feelings of the past. It's time travel. The key is to consider yourself an observer — it's important not to alter or manipulate the world, but to appreciate the beauty of existence, of life in a moment, of being itself.
I've been shooting since I was a teenager. Abandoned it for years during my career, came back to it because it makes me happy and keeps me sane. Those two reasons have never changed.
Software engineering is building castles in the sky. Photography lets me explore the tangible castles that exist in the material world. The balance between the two has kept me whole.
The Monochrom
My primary camera was a Leica M Monochrom with a 35mm Summicron permanently mounted. One camera, one lens, no decisions. Having a single focal length is liberating. You stop thinking about equipment and start thinking about seeing.
Color perception is a construct of the human mind. By capturing only luminance, you get one step closer to perceiving things as they truly are. Nothing in life is black-and-white. Everything is grey.
Though eventually, I started noticing red.
The Archive
photos.kennethreitz.org is the archive — over 12,000 photographs, searchable by camera, lens, city, year, and AI-generated tags. Every image has EXIF data and AI-written descriptions. You can explore a decade of shooting by the gear that made it, the places it happened, or the subjects the AI found in it. It's the best way to get lost in the work.
Here are some random photos from the collection: