Newtown is a very eclectic inner west suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, just a quick hop away from the Sydney CBD.

I’ve been to Newtown on thousands of occasions, whether it be to shoot gigs at the famous Enmore Theatre or dine at one of the many fine restaurants and cafes, however I’ve never wandered the streets with a camera and people watched.

This was my first outing with my new Fujifilm X-H2 camera, and whilst I usually have the Fujinon 23mm f2 attached, tonight I was armed with the Fujinon 16-55 f2.8 lens to help give me a wider perspective.

It was a warm spring evening in Sydney as I ventured into the famous main street of Newtown, King Street.

I met up with a close friend and fellow photographic enthusiast, Matthew Slager, whose photographic skills are improving rapidly. Matt is studying the photographic art form, although usually when he is in Newtown it is as a professional musician, not a photographer.

There is never a shortage of photographic and artistic video content here in Newtown. Newtown is a place where you will find graffiti and street art, wonderful restaurants, theatre, live music etc, it has it all.

There was still plenty of daylight available when we arrived, and we chose to wander to the northern end of King Street to stretch the legs and warm up.

Though the traffic was hectic, it was still too early for a huge people stampede as we marched toward the Enmore end of King Street. The window of daylight gave us opportunities to shoot people entering and departing the precinct with a setting western sun behind them, and the odd plane arriving into Sydney also added to the story backdrop.

As dusk began to take place, suddenly the lights took effect and different opportunities presented themselves.

We now had street lights, car and bus lights, retail shop and restaurant lights, all set before a magnificent magenta sunset.

Enter the darker part of the evening and now there were considerably more people and vehicles, making for candid images or b-roll of people moving about, almost always completely unaware of the cameras near them.

People, vehicles, lights, action!

My new Fujifilm X-H2 is perfect for hybrid shooting. A couple of buttons and it changes quickly from photo to video and vice-versa. It is such a wonderful machine to work with, so light and functional, and the image and video quality is outstanding.

After a couple of hours Matt needed to head home, so I bid farewell, thanked him for the companionship and continued to walk around a little more on my own.

This gave me the opportunity to head back to my car, grab my tripod and do some time lapse of vehicles moving along King Street - this was always the plan, however I didn’t want to lug the tripod up and down King Street for a few hours.

Well, my legs and back were now too sore to continue, and I had a tonne of content to work with, so I headed back to the car to begin the drive home.

I have scratched the Newtown photographic itch, although I’m quite sure that one day I’ll return, perhaps later in the night when it is even busier than when we we there.

Thanks for taking the time to read the blog, hope you enjoy the images and the YouTube short film in the YouTube tab on my website.

Roger Brooks.