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Golden Rule

Always carry your camera!  I often see things when I haven’t got my camera, my girlfriend gets VERY annoyed with me saying “oh, look at that, I wish I had my camera“!

Stop and LOOK!

First off, because you will probably spend a lot of time in towns and cities, amongst lots of people, you will probably have become very familiar with this situation and as a consequence it is very easy to miss what is actually happening all around you.

If you take a while to stop and actually observe the location, people and different siuations and ‘moments’ that are happening all around you, you will see that there are photo opportunities all around which you can capture.  For instance, people feeding pidgeons, street performers, comical coincidences such as an advert that may be inadvertantly interacting with someone stood by it or even just someone having a rest on a park bench can all offer a great shot.

A good street photo will be ‘self contained’ in that it will tell a story and contain an element of drama that makes in uniques.  The situations and subjects captured will very often be spur of the moment and something that you didn’t see coming (so you’ll need to be quick!).

By Lab2112

Location

Trying to cover a whole town or city wont work, if you try this you can guarantee that all of the photo opportunities will be in the spot you left 5 minutes ago!

Take a look about in a ‘scouting session’ and then decide on one area to concentrate on, this should be somewhere with a lot of bustle and also interesting surroundings, a town square or popular park for instance.

Get set up first

By definition street photography is very often spur of the moment and so make sure you have your camera set up and ready to go before you even start looking for photos (lens cap off!) ;0)  Moments are what makes a photo and they usually only happen once, if you miss it then its gone (unless you ask a complete stranger to retrace his/her steps!).

In most situations you can use the ‘P’ setting on the camera and let it do the work for you.  Some situations may call for some manual adjustment (slow shutter speed etc).

I often also take a ‘point and shoot’ camera as this is usually sufficient and I find it an add a bit of a ‘grungy’ feeling to the photos.

Get up close

Get in close to your subjects and shoot with a slightly wide angle lens, I’m not saying get in the way of peaople and scare them, but if you take photos of someone from afar then they will probably think that you are either a stalker or a stakeout where they are being watched!

By t_a_i_s

Don’t stand taking pictures with a serious frown on your face, this will make many people feel very uncomfortable and could land you in a sticky situation.  If someone does look over at you or ask what your doing then tell them and be happy about it – SMILE! ;0)

Shoot Shoot Shoot!

As always shoot loads of photos, the more you get then the more chances that you will capture ‘that photo’!  This obvioulsy means that you should also carry spare batteries and memory cards.

The boring bit

Make sure that you know where and what you can legally take photos of, there are plenty of articles on the web explaining this.  Such as here for UK photography law, and here for the US.k

By wili_hybrid

By moriza

By gari.baldi

By qwertyuiop

By jam-L

By carf

By wili_hybrid

By fabbio

By flydime

By diankarl (busy in JKT-will visit your stream soon)

By publikaccion.es

By publikaccion.es

Enjoy and get out there! ;0)

Preview image by carf