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"Initially, I don't think I was even aware of street photography," says Gus Powell. "It was a natural thing for me. I grew up in New York, I was an only child, so I'd do a lot of walking around the city. But after a time I wanted to bring something back from my wanderings . . . so I started taking these pictures. I wasn't aware I was a part of a tradition. It was just a natural impulse."

What Powell brought back was something remarkable, pictures that deftly convey his fascination with the city, its people and their shared daily epiphanies. And while he will readily acknowledge the impact of photographers like Garry Winogrand, Walker Evans and Joel Meyerowitz, he 's still talking street photography on his own terms.

His first book, The Company of Strangers, showcases his subtle unassuming art. Over the last three years Powell has been escaping his office job during lunch breaks and scouring the immediate vicinity for chance moments of beauty and drama. The idea came when a friend gave him a copy of Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara. These odes to New York, penned in the poet's lunch hour, lead Powell to his own project, Lunch Pictures, which are the basis of the book:

"My full time job was cutting down on my picture time, so the Lunch Pictures were a salvation . . . I found there was enough for me to work with just in the middle of the day."

What's great is how Powell turns the project's constraints, which he compares to the focusing structure of a sonnet, to his advantage. "I liked the discipline of shooting this one area over the years. . . just watching the light change and the seasons pass. All these different moments were caught in the same time and space – midday, within five blocs of my work. Most of us are making these patterns, especially in the city, it's a matter of seeing that there's a complexity to them that we should stop and enjoy."

These delicate patterns, which he sees like a dance, run through the work, even to the point where there are dance steps printed on the hardcover under the dust jacket – as if to say, if you look below the surface you'll find the rhythms and unconscious choreography of the street.

It's this conviction – that remarkable moments are relentlessly unfolding around us – that illuminates the book. And for Powell, one of their core components is light. He talks of "light events", but besides the visions of road-to-Damascus clarity (workers bathed in beatific light reminiscent of diCorcia, except here there's no trickery, just real light, real life) there's something more subtle. "As well as movement and gesture and the more narrative events, sometimes you just need light . . . Light can be your protagonist."

Indeed, Powell often consciously avoids the grand flourishing moments. "In a lot of my pictures there really is no obvious hero. Just people walking towards me and people walking away . . .And the fundamental point is that's still enough. More than enough.

"Some have an obvious payoff," he concedes. "When you're presented with a gift you'd be foolish to ignore it . . . But I suppose in some way I try to reject it. I'll keep it in the frame, but push it to the side and search for something to add to it." And it's important to understand that this isn't willful perversity, it's just Powell challenging the viewer, and himself, to recognize the potential for excitement and emotion in the smallest things. "I want people to look at the whole picture, to see the little echoes of gesture and shape . . . to look harder."

Sometime when you look into Powell's pictures, you're jolted by the image staring back. Street photography's credo of authenticity generally means that we watch unseen. But when the subject catches us observing them the effect is both compelling an unnerving. "There's a huge tradition of the invisible street photographer – from Cartier-Bresson to Robert Frank onward" explains Powell. "I'm six foot five, which can make that kind of difficult! If you look at the heights and builds of most of the greats they're all a similar (compact) size . . . But my height means I can make different types of pictures." It also means that rather than shying away from any link with the subject, he can use it to pull us in. "Eye contact is a wonderful part of life on the city streets. I find the connections that can happen for a split second kind of exciting and sweet."

At its heart, Powell's work is a call to go out onto the streets and open our eyes. Because when that sea of faces walking towards us is transformed, it truly is a beautiful thing to behold. "It's always been my hope that people might take their time between X and Y a little more seriously – the quotidian is so ripe, there's so much going on . . . You just have to be willing to be moved by these little things we're all taking for granted; simply, by these people moving through light and space."