(Editor’s Note: Words and Photographs by Jared Krause)

I started shooting in June of 2009. I had causally been thinking about photography and decided to buy a camera. I started posting to a photo blog because I felt like photography was a good way to share my experiences with other people. Shooting street photos gave my photography purpose, a goal and a style to pursue rather than just taking random shots of anything. It was a edgy and new to me. I decided to start posting photos to my blog every day, and did so for over a year. In that period, I got very comfortable using my camera, and quite familiar with light, contrast, colour and the other elements involved in photography. Even though I wasn’t shooting street, I was learning.

I remember Bruce Gilden being one of my first inspirations. I tried imitating his style by using my big fat 10mm lens. I wasn’t taking anything great, but it was exciting. As time went by the novelty of shooting photos with people in them wore off a bit, and I’ve started looking for unique scenes and moments.

I still regularly shoot candid, but I’m looking for more than just a shot with a person in it. I’ve started paying close attention to colour and light and find myself searching for those elements when I’m out shooting.

I’m inspired by light and colour. The right light can make a boring scene a beautiful one. The majority of my photos these days are taken with my iPhone (you can see more of Jared’s work on Instagram). I work in an office, so it’s the only camera I can have with me 24/7.

Shooting with a phone has actually pushed me to look for colour and light more than I did before. The phones shutter speed isn’t great in a lot of settings so I find myself capturing photos based on great lighting and colour rather than these active street shots I take when I bring out my Olympus OMD.

I see colour more and more in different palettes rather than one off colours. I look for a collection of colours that work together rather than individual ones. I’m working on a book where I’m pairing two square images together based largely on their colours.

It’s a lot of fun finding two images that seem to use the same group of colours, as if an artist painted one, then went on to paint the other without getting different paint. I love that colour can bring a boring scene to life.

My tip for street photographers would be to not be constrained by a specific style or genre. More and more I’m seeing photographers I look up to shoot everything.

Take David Alan Harvey, he shoots everything. He strikes me as the guy at a party who can’t put his camera down. It’s not all street, it’s not all documentary. Photograph everything without constraint, put the constraint on your editing process when you’re arranging photos for projects.