👉 Would you like to do street photography? Here is everything you need to know so that you can make some outstanding shots.
Let’s get started…
- What is Street Photography?
- Street Photography Sub-genres
- What camera do you need for street photography?
- What makes good street photography?
- Processing Street Photography
- Learn street photography
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I get started?
- What is composition ?
- What is good street photography?
- Does street photography have to have people in it?
- Why is street photography so popular?
- Is street photography legal?
- Do you ask for permission in street photoraphy?
- Is it illegal to take a picture of a random person?
- Do I need a model release for street photography?
- Street Photography: Conclusion
What is Street Photography?
If we are going to talk about something, it is important to define our terms. Wikipedia defines street photography like so: “photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents.”
The above is the classic definition of the craft. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated. Why? Because the straight definition is highly restrictive. If we shoot in the streets and it is “street photography”, what if we shoot in a hospital, is it hospital photography? If we shoot at the beach, is it beach photography?
You get it, it can’t mean photography only made in the streets. So what is a more accurate definition, then? I remember meeting a photographer years ago that when he was in school and the teacher gave them photo-assignments, the teacher never used the term “street photography” but “life photography”. For all intents and purposes the assignments were exactly that but the term was never used.
A synonym can therefore be “life photography”. It can be done in color, black and white, with or without humans and pretty much anywhere you are, hence the appeal.
Street photography is much more plastic than you might think.
Don’t let your definition of get in the way of your images! A great photograph is a great photograph, period.
👉 Learn more:
Street Photography Sub-genres
Don’t see these as restrictive, but more an indication of how rich the craft can be. If you are a beginner, you really don’t concern yourself with these. Start shooting and see what you respond to best, and you will naturally gravitate towards one style over the other, or maybe mix a few.
Candid
This is what most photographers do. It’s mostly about capturing unposed photos of people, slices of life as it develops in the streets. Usually the “point” of the image is contained within: something interesting happens, someone does a grimace, etc. It’s all about what’s in the image, most likely an interesting event that happened.
Artistic / Fine art
While all of the sub-genres of street photography are trying to create art, this style of street photography is mostly concerned with the emotional and the composition aspect of the photo rather than what event is happening in it. So it’s less about capturing an event and more about making art with the streets your canvas.
Cinematic
Cinematic street photography is a popular style that makes the street shot look and feel like a still from a movie. Just like humor street photography it is a very accessible style to viewers, but requires a bit more gear and effort to achieve the cinematic look. Special cameras and lenses are recommended for this but can be faked.
Humor
This style is always pre-occupied with photographing funny moments, people doing funny things, etc. This style is popular because it’s easy to “get” for anyone who looks at it. An easy way to make these kinds of shots is to find funny juxtapositions.
Urban Landscape
This style of street photography (and many would argue that it isn’t) the main subject is the buildings and the man-made landscape. Vast sweeping shots of the skyline and details of the sun on the windows fall under this sub-genre.
Street Portraiture
Street portraiture are portraits made in the streets. These are usually posed and do not claim to be anything but posed. Just like the humor, cinematic street style, street portraiture is very accessible to viewers, they “get” it easily.
What camera do you need for street photography?
Now that we’ve seen what street shooting is all about, what do you need to shoot? The beauty of the craft is that all you need is a basic camera. You can shoot with a phone, low-end camera, whatever you have. The only exception is if you want to shoot in low light, a high ISO camera and a lens with fast aperture would be requires. Besides that any camera would do, but there are some that are better than others for this task, let’s take a look at them…
There is only one camera in the world that is unapologetically designed for streetshooters: The Ricoh GR line of cameras. Three reasons why: It’s a pocketable camera so you can take it everywhere, it has a special mode called snap focus that helps you change focusing modes on the fly, and it’s handling as far as cameras is legendary.
While most people have the new Ricoh GR camera, my favorite is the Ricoh GRD IV, it’s old but I like it better because it has a small sensor in it. Other favorite cameras of photographers are the Fuji X100 cameras but they are not as small and unless you have an adapter, they are 35mm focal length cameras.
But again, any camera will do. That being said I would however avoid large cameras for streetshooting because they start getting heavy after a while and can cause neck pain if you use a strap. My friend Don Springer (more on him later) had a large mirrorless camera with a very fast 28mm lens on it. Because it was a fast lens, it was also big.
He had it on his neck and started to develop serious neck pain. His doctor set him straight on not putting weight on his neck anymore. Turns out, your head is quite heavy and your neck is already doing a LOT of work without you having to add to it with your camera!
The most important part of the craft is not what you have in your hands, but what you have between your eyes.
👉 Learn more:
- Street Photography cameras
- Best street photography settings (Recommended Aperture, shutter speed and ISOs)
What makes good street photography?
Good street photography is not about having a cool camera and then point and shooting. There’s way more to the craft than simply shooting in the streets. Every street photograph can be divided into 3 parts: What you shoot (your subject and your scene), How you shoot it (Composition, visual elements, etc) and finally WHY you shoot it (the psychology behind it all). What makes good street photography is a combination of What you shoot + How and Why you shoot it.
📍 WHAT [What you can see]
The “What” part is the visible part of a photograph. If you can point to it in a photo, it’s the “what”. It is usually made up of buildings, people and whatever scene they happen to be in. In a sense, it’s the “physical” part of the photograph.
📍 HOW & WHY [What you can’t see]
The “How” and “Why” part are the invisible parts of the photograph. You can point at a person in a photograph but you can’t really point at the psychological effect that the person’s body language is communicating.
“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg.
There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.”
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
If you look at the graphic above, there’s a lot of psychology that goes into a photo, that is because your real canvas is not really the streets, or the blank frame, it’s actually your viewer’s brain and every element of your photograph will have an effect on it.
What really makes the difference
Street photography can either be shot, or it can be made. The first (taking photos) is heavily focused on what to shoot (like a man in a suit), while the other is focused on how and what to shoot (like paying attention to the color coordination & psychology).
The average street photographer is only concerned with the what. And the result is taking photos…their images are nothing more than mere snapshots, where they take photos rather than make them. How many pictures of people walking down the streets, or someone doing something trivial do we need? Don’t think people don’t see trough the fact that there has been no thinking behind a shot:
Great streetshots comes from focusing in the How and the Why, rather than just the What (taking photos). No great art has ever been done without forethought, that is why simply going in the streets and shooting won’t work.
To a large degree humans learn by imitating, this is fine for learning how to walk and talk, but when it comes to street photography, it plays against you. Because what really makes street photography work is for a large part, unseen. Don’t take, make.
Imagine a photograph of a woman wearing red in the streets, behind her are some food stalls. What you see is a woman wearing red and food stalls. What you don’t see is the psychological effect of the red dress, the color coordination between the dress and the foodstall, the eye travel created by strategically placed lines, how her body language reads.
So focus more on the How and the Why, this is where great art really come from.
The Eye, Heart and Mind
There is a lot to consider when it comes to the Why & the How. Everything within the bottom half of the iceberg can be remembered and categorized in 3 areas: The Eye, Heart and Mind.
When I first learned street photography, just like everybody else I was obsessed with cameras and the What. Photographing in the streets without thinking. My images of course left a lot to be desired. Then I started to look deeper into the iceberg and focused on the technical aspects. While my images looked clean, they didn’t have any punching power.
Afterwards I focused on composition, and while my images were visually impressive, they did not leave an impression on any who saw them. It’s only when I met my friend Don Springer, who was under the wings of one of the most important museum curators in the world that he made it click. One large part of the iceberg is the emotional aspect.
So what makes good street photography is a combination of the photographer’s eye, heart and mind. Good composition + emotional charge + technical/psychological aspect makes compelling streetshots Here’s a graphic straight from the street photography course I made with Don:
EYE
The composition aspect
of the photograph
HEART
The emotional aspect
of the photograph
MIND
The technical/psychological
aspect of the photograph
📌 If you’ve ever seen street images that look cool but fail to make an impression on you, they are missing the emotional aspect.
📌 If you’ve seen images that move you but don’t attract the attention, they are missing the composition aspect.
📌 If you’ve seen images that move you, attract you, but there’s something that feels like it’s missing, they are missing the technical aspect.
All three create a wheel, if any are missing, things can still work just like a broken wheel can still turn, but you won’t be able to shake the feeling that there’s something missing. It’s all about capturing art that has depth and meaning to it.
👉Learn more:
- Street Photography tips
- Street Photography Course
- Join my Newsletter (for more tips like this)
By now you should have your camera ready and a better grasp of the craft than before. Now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty and capture that decisive moment like Henri Cartier Bresson liked to say.
[thrive_leads id=’470547′]Processing Street Photography
Once you are done with capturing your images, what do you do? You edit and process them.
Here’s the deal however: Post-processing doesn’t CREATE your photograph, it REALIZES it. If your image sucks, there is no amount of post processing that will save it. It’s like trying to put perfume on a pig. But if your image already has everything it needs, post processing is mostly an act of “bringing out” what is already there.
In the image above shot it might look like the post processing “created” the photograph, but it only brought it out. The image you see on the right is the one I had in mind all along, I just needed the raw material to work from.
But post processing is not just about making images look good, it is also about commanding the gaze of your viewer. As a street photographer, you are a director of an image, and as a director you want to control what the person sees, when. You want a controlled experience, or else your images is nothing more than a snapshot.
You do your best of course to get everything right in camera, but rarely does the photograph make the cut in it’s original state. There’s just too many moving pieces and your image simply probably won’t have the eye travel it needs to shine. That is one of the strongest reasons for processing your images the right way, above the aesthetic reasons.
The program most street photographers use is Lightroom. Here’s a simple formula to bump up your images in Lightroom: Ramp up the contrast a bit and ramp up the clarity a bit. This will make your images pop more immediately. Of course there is much more to post processing than this (like how to direct the attention of your viewer), but as a beginner these two sliders are enough to make your images pop more.
Psychology also plays a big part in post processing. You must know how your “real canvas”, your viewer’s mind will interpret your processing. Change the color temperature, and you completely change the meaning and feeling of your image.
Another feature that street photographers use is presets. Just like in the old days you could select film stock for your film camera, nowadays you can do the same but after the image was shot. Presets help keeping a consistent look and also saves you an insane amount of time. Plus unlike film, you can edit the presets to taste to your liking. We have street photography presets here.
Learn street photography
If you want to learn more about the craft, here’s some of the best resources below:
Phototactic Street photography course
The only street photography course you will ever need with everything covered in a step-by-step manner.
Inspired Eye street photography magazine
Monthly magazine with video insights, filled with tips tricks and more for inspiration.
Streetwise book
A collection of interesting, fun and insightful articles written on the craft for the last 10 years.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get started?
The beauty of street photography is that you can get started right away with any camera, no special equipment needed. Simply take your camera and head for the streets. You will want to keep composition rules in mind, for example “Like with like”
[thrive_leads id=’470547′]What is composition ?
It’s arranging the visual elements like lines and shapes in a coherent manner. A simple way to compose is to group like with like, like repeating the same shapes in a frame. It’s all about creating visual order from chaos.
What is good street photography?
Good street photography is more than simply walking down the streets and shooting strangers. Good street photography is layered, there’s the composition aspect, the technical aspect and the emotional aspect. A good street photograph is more concerned with those than simply point and shooting.
Does street photography have to have people in it?
You don’t need to have people in your images to make a great shot. One of the pioneers of the genre, Eugene Atget had barely people in his work. There’s always the urban landscape, animals and more you can shoot.
Why is street photography so popular?
It is popular because it’s so easy to start and so. But because the average streetshooter simply focuses on the “what” rather than the “how”, Facebook is littered with snapshots rather than photographs. So standing out takes some effort.
Is street photography legal?
Note: This is not legal counsel. This depends on the country. In Korea for example, people have the “right to face” and they could potentially sue you for photographing them. You have to check with your local laws to see if it is legal. In the USA, and a few other other western countries, you have to be in a public space for it to be legal.
Do you ask for permission in street photoraphy?
Most street photography is done without . Check the laws in your country for this.
Why shoot without first asking? People are more real. When I ask my kids for a picture, they give me the exact same face every time, and they make a peace with their hands. When you ask for permission, people are very aware they are being photographed and will put their guards up. Even more when you ask for a portrait.
It also plays on serendipity, the very thing street photographers thrive for. Things happening by chance, when you ask for permission it is no longer serendipitous.
But at the end of the day, it is a matter of legality and preference. If you want to ask, ask.
In my street photography course, I reveal my top trick that makes images super close and still have your subjects not pose.
Is it illegal to take a picture of a random person?
Note: This is not legal counsel. In the USA and a few other countries, it is legal as long as you are in a public space.
Do I need a model release for street photography?
Note: This is not legal counsel. You usually do not need a model release for street photography in most cases as long as you are in a public space. See the street photography legality article for a jewish man who took a street photographer to court, and lost.
- What is street photography? Answers the most common questions
- Making money as a street photographer, the definitive guide
Street Photography: Conclusion
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About the author
Olivier Duong is a Haitian-French-Vietnamese pro photographer and graphic designer turned street photographer. He co-created Inspired Eye with Don Springer.
