‘I love the contrasting textures – his amazing hair, the dirty window’: Shane Taylor’s best phone picture

The street photographer reflects on a chance encounter on the top deck of a bus

Shane Taylor began taking photographs about 20 years ago as a step in overcoming social anxiety. I was very reclusive, but I decided to go to college," he says. I studied design and discovered Helen Levitt and Garry Winogrand, and this thing called street photography. Learning the craft helped me in pragmatic ways; I had to leave the house to do it. I began to stop avoiding people and actively approach them instead. It was basically immersion therapy."

With the streets suddenly full of subjects, as opposed to strangers, Taylor found himself repeatedly drawn to commuters, buses and the London Underground. You find all these people so densely packed together, yet entirely by themselves."