Zahyr Caan was on a sightseeing trip to Tokyo when he took this photograph. He was in Ginza, on his way to visit the Gundam statue, having tried Japanese muffins for breakfast at an exclusive restaurant. It was an August morning, and the temperature had already hit 38C.
“The sun was very bright, meaning excellent conditions for my style of street photography,” says Caan, who was born in Pakistan and now lives in Nottingham. “I like to create a mise en scène and then wait for a human element to enter the frame.”
Caan says that he was “drawn towards the strong shadow and light, creating a graphic scene”, but he had to wait for some colour to arrive and tie the image together. “This came in the form of a taxi,” he says. “The red man appeared at just the right moment and became a bonus, as is the nature sometimes when you’re shooting ad hoc within an urban environment.”
He used an iPhone 13 Pro Max and applied minimal edits, aside from lightening and darkening adjustments. Street photography, he adds, is a mixture of “art and skill”.
“It’s easier than ever now, thanks to smartphone technology and the ability to be very discreet. If we really start to pay attention, we see much more than what is visible at first look. I hope people notice the colours here, and the overall tone, all tied together with the extended relationship between the yellow taxi and the red man.”
