Street Photography

So recently I’ve been doing a vast amount of street photography so I thought I’d share with you what I’ve learnt.

The first time I did street photography it felt obtrusive, I felt like I was doing something wrong because it is essentially photographing people without their consent.

Later I found out that street photography is legal in a public place. A subject is also allowed to ask you to delete images and it’s always better to agree to avoid an argument, as chances are you will find another interesting subject pretty quickly.

Street photography involves observing the people around you when your wandering aimlessly round the streets and people are an extremely interesting subject when you find what you’re looking for.

Everybody has a story to tell and after photographing them on the streets you become an author, a writer of images waiting to be discovered.

But for me on the streets I don’t just look for people I look for something quirky, something out of the ordinary.

Street photography is essentially speed dating for the minds eye, you see what you envision as an interesting subject and shoot them as fast as you can before the opportunity disappears.

So previously I wrote a post called read this if you want to take great photographs of people by Henry Carroll but I purposely left out his street photography tips to use here.

Henry Carroll says that ‘capturing fleeting moments on the street is all about making your own luck’. To me this means that street photography is hit and miss if you don’t capture the right person at the right time you will lose the opportunity or if you see something interesting it might have moved before you have the chance to photograph it.

Carroll states photography is all about finding the right spot so all the action will come to you. If lots of people are looking at something you can’t see then assume they are an interesting subject. Approach people as well as capturing moments. Slower shutter speed blurs your subject and faster shutter speed captures less movement.

To conclude this post street photography opens your eyes to the world around you and it gives you an in depth view into the people in any city and the stories they have to tell which is what makes it all the more intriguing to me.

Here are a few of my street photography shots from a variety of walks in different cities: