Street photography seems to be becoming increasingly popular. If you want to give street photography a go we’ve pulled together a few tips to help you get started.
What Are Street Photographs?
Taking street photographs (or street photography as it is known) is one of the most exciting and dynamic styles of photography out there. If you are stuck for inspiration or bored of your usual shooting style the street photography can breathe a whole new breath of life into your photography mojo.
You may have heard people referring to ‘people watching’ which tends to mean sitting down and watching the world go by and taking notice of the diverse characters that there are everywhere in this world. Well to some extent street photography can be thought of as an extension to people watching. The big difference is that in street photography we are trying to capture these people going about their daily business in their natural environment.
When walking the streets try to look for things or expressions in people that we all experience or can identify with. Ultimately a good street photograph should simply be one that appeals to you visually – there are no set rules. However if you browse through street photography groups on sites such as flickr you’ll soon notice common themes that you can use to get started.
Tips to Take Great Street Photographs
1. Keep It Simple
The whole ethos of street photography is to simply get out there and start shooting what you see. Try simply to walk around and take a shot of anything or anyone interesting that catches your eye. To help you at the beginning it can be a good idea to switch your camera into automatic or P mode, leaving you free to concentrate on subject identification and composition rather than worrying about getting the perfect exposure using manual settings.
2. Keep Your Finger On The Trigger
The thing to remember with street photography is that a great scene or moment can unfold in front of you in a split second. To increase your chances of capturing it be sure to always have you camera at hand. Many people find that street photography is addictive and find they are no longer able to leave the house without having a camera with them. In fact this is a great way to improve your photography – by shooting more often you will naturally improve at a quicker rate.
3. Move to Monochrome
Another way to help your street photographs is to switch to black and white shooting mode. Somehow monochrome shots seem to work better for this style of photography. Shooting street photographs in black and white tends to focus the viewers attention on the feeling or emotion of your shot rather than being distracted by the colors and hues of the scene.
4. Play The Waiting Game
Often great street photographs contain moments of emotion such as a re-united couple hugging outside a train station or a construction worker unsubtly checking out a passing business woman. Capturing these little snippets of emotion in peoples lives can make a great impact to viewers of a still photograph because in real life although we see these moments they usually pass so quickly that we do not have time to reflect on them.
A simple tip is to head somewhere where you’d expect such scenes to occur – maybe the train station for example.
5. Shoot From the Hip
Many people feel self conscious about shooting strangers in public without asking beforehand. The whole essence of street photography is to capture the moment spontaneously, without asking subjects to pose for you.
A good tip for the self conscious street photographer is to ’shoot from the hip’. This involves taking your photographs without raising your camera up to your eye to frame the shot. Instead simply hold your camera down around you waist somewhere (ideally with two hands) and point and shoot at your subject. Initially you will end up missing a lot of shots due to bad aim but you’ll soon learn to get the right angles.
6. Learn From The Pros
If you need some more inspiration why not check out some of these books from some of the worlds best street photographers.
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