“SOME things that life offers,” street photographer Matt Stuart suggests, “are far more interesting and revealing than anything you can make up.”

Stuart has spent more than 20 years looking for images in the real world. His street photographs reveal his eye for the incongruous, the unlikely, the amusing in the everyday: the man whose car has been clamped standing in front of the grinning guy who just happens to be dressed up as the devil, the leaf curled up to look like a pair of lips, the kid whose head seems to have been replaced by a balloon, or, as seen here, the man in Spain whose dog has done the same.

Stuart’s new book, Think Like a Street Photographer, is part instruction manual for budding street photographers – “Think Lucky, Be Lucky,” “Be Calm,” “See with a Child’s Eyes” – part gather-up of his superior examples of the form.

Patience, optimism and a good pair of shoes, he says, all help.

Think Like a Street Photographer by Matt Stuart is published by Laurence King, £14.99. Photograph © Matt Stuart