What Street Photography Taught Me About Patience?

I was never a patient person.

I always wanted things to happen quickly; the shot, the progress, the result. But the street doesn’t care about your pace. It moves on its own rhythm, and if you want to catch a glimpse of its stories, you have to slow down and wait.

Street photography taught me that waiting is part of the craft. You walk for hours, camera in hand, searching for that one frame and sometimes, it never comes. Yet somehow, that doesn’t feel like failure anymore. The act of walking itself becomes the reward.

The more I walked, the more I started to see.

Faces, gestures, glances that used to blend into the background now reveal entire stories. A man smoking by the sea. A kid chasing pigeons. Light hitting an old wall for just a few seconds before disappearing.

You start to realize that every corner holds something. Not always beautiful, but always real.

And when you finally press the shutter, it’s not just a photo. It’s a quiet conversation between you and the world.

Maybe patience isn’t just about waiting.

Maybe it’s about learning to see what’s already there.