10 Street Photography Tips - The Photography Show 2020

hello street photographers brian from street snappers here with a short presentation with lots of tips on how to really elevate your street photography for those of you who don't know me i'm a fujifilm x photographer in other words an ambassador and i'm a full-time professional street photographer i run street photography workshops across the uk and europe and i've written two best-selling street photography books and it's probably time for a quick plug 52 assignment street photography and mastering street photography so i meet a lot of people uh who perhaps struggle a little bit with street photography and that could be because their approach isn't quite right or maybe the nerves take over and there's a lack of confidence holding them back or very commonly they're overthinking it and maybe expecting too much so if any of this sounds familiar stay tuned for 10 hot tips on how to elevate your street photography my first tip then it's all about gear and you really must keep it simple i'll typically use one of two cameras for street photography this little fujifilm xf10 which is really underrated it's great value this is with me wherever i go and whatever i'm doing it's got a fixed 18 mil lens which is 28 equivalent 24 megapixel sensor it's so small this is always in my pocket and the great thing is i'll never look like a photographer with this i just look like a tourist so moving it up a step my day-to-day street photography camera my go-to camera is the x100v and this in its latest iteration is just about perfect in every way for a street camera i won't go into all the technical stuff because it's been said so many times in so many places but if ever you only if you only you ever buy one camera for street photography this one should certainly be on your short list i like to travel light while i'm doing street photography so i'll use the smallest possible bag i can get away with again i don't want to look like a street photographer so i use something like this which isn't really a camera bag but it's a great day bag it won't draw attention to you and it carries just about enough stuff if i'm uh having if i'm carrying more gear i'll take something bigger and i use something like a peak design messenger bag but keep it simple minimum gear you don't need loads of gear for street photography so tip number two learn to read the streets to be a good street photographer you need to be streetwise to understand what's going on around you and to make sense of it all most people just see loads of clutter with not much interesting happening street photographers need to see really see what's going on around them so we need to develop great observational skills and a real sense for detail but what else do i mean by reading the streets well first of all stay alert you never know what's around the corner never hesitate you just don't know what you're going to come across on the streets study the light become a light hunter study body language you need to really be able to predict what's going to happen next really watch people you need to find detail detail is really important and i'll talk in a while about connections but finding the detail making connections is brilliant and you will create things like visual metaphors like this uh fork in the road by the way go fishing you may have heard of the fishing technique this is where we find our ideal background and weight for as long as it takes for the right subject to present itself to make the frame complete it's a really popular approach in street photography although for me i don't really have the patience to to linger too long i know people who wait for an hour for a shot i will maybe wait five or ten minutes and that's it and finally on this slow down really really walk slowly look all around you take a 360 degree view of the world if you're walking slowly you'll see more of what's going on you'll hear more you'll smell things you'll just become really tuned into your your environment so leading on from this my third tip is make connections this is really important you need to find things in your frame that connect to each other it could be any combination of people things foreground background and so on but you really should be aiming to connect connect them to produce something interesting in this shot the simple juxtaposition provides the connection and in this one we're making a simple connection between the sign and the poor bird and here's another one which connects a word a simple word with things going on around it so make connections the fourth tip and this may sound really obvious but shoot interesting stuff shoot interesting things how often do you see a really boring image and you think to yourself how is this street photography a guy sitting on a bench somebody walking past sainsbury's somebody just sitting in a cafe there's nothing interesting about these things and it's our job as street photographers to make the world look interesting we often see an image of somebody walking through a beam of light or past a brightly coloured coloured wall but is it really interesting enough well it could be but often it needs another element that elevates it from the mundane to the interesting it could be something funny it could be something evocative ironic sad whimsical hilarious it could be something really small like this guy's ear flaps which got caught by the wind or the shadow on this woman's face or maybe it's just a scene which you think is a lovely composition uh like this one or this one that has more of an abstract quality what i try to look out for though is a real sense of the unusual in the usual something that would be mundane but it becomes interesting because something just shouts at you to take a second look and that's what it's all about so tip number five is to use projects to bring a real sense of focus and purpose to your work people who are new to street photography often struggle to find an interesting subject and you know we we can walk the streets for hours or days uh and it's all too easy to resort resort to the sort of randomness that i was talking about earlier the you know we've all seen many thousands of street shots on the web which are of random people in random places doing random things that random guy walking down the street walking past a colored wall and so on it can just be a bit meaningless there is no sense of narrative no theme no connection between the images so to add real impact to your work organize your shooting around projects so project is simply a collection of images which is generated around a specific theme with a kind of glue that bonds them all together as a body of work and projects can provide you with a clear end game whether it's in the form of a photo book a set of prints an exhibition a web gallery a blog something that will spur you on to produce a tangible worthy body of work one of the most satisfying satisfying outcomes of a project is to share your work and there's a real sense of achievement to see your images in a gallery on a website or maybe in the pages of a book zines are a very popular way uh currently to to bring a project to life and my latest scene contains a project shot in venice and these fantastic little booklets cost me one pound 50 each to have them professionally printed so we can all produce stuff like this here's an example of a project i'm working on it's all about soho and in particular where the old soho meets the new soho [Music] [Music] and this is a good example of a project this is now my third year and into this project and i think i probably got another year or so to go before i've got enough material to make a book but it's a good illustration of a project based on a fairly narrow theme in this case a small geographical area so think project my sixth tip is set it and forget it street photography shouldn't be complicated in fact from a technical perspective things couldn't be simpler and it's vital that you're in a state of constant readiness to be able to react quickly to scenes evolving around you so i tend to set my camera up at the start of the day and i don't touch these settings unless something major changes like a big change in the light for example i really don't want to be faffing around with camera settings wasting mental energy which should be going into what is happening around me here's an approach that works for me and this is how i set my camera up for for street photography and it's incredibly simple start off by setting your iso to auto and in your menu you should be able to set a minimum shutter speed at which the shutter will fire in your auto iso menu set that to something like a 200th or 250th of a second set the exposure mode to aperture priority and then you need to set the aperture you want the camera to work at and i set the aperture to f8 always pretty much always f8 this is a good compromise aperture it lets a fair amount of light into the camera and it gives me a decent front to back sharpness or depth of field this auto iso option provided you set your menu to give you this minimum shutter speed will help minimize subject blur or camera shake either of which will ruin or kill your shot the tiny amount of extra noise caused by the iso going too high if that's what happens is not going to kill your shot it's a trade-off so this small aperture f8 or maybe f11 if it's a really bright day so if i'm shooting somewhere like lisbon i will close it down to f11 or maybe f-16 where you've got this brilliant light-wise so this always helps with zone focusing and which i'll talk more about in a second so these settings are my walk-around settings and it's a it's a compromise it makes sure you get the shot 98 of the time and sure you you can change things when you need to if you want some kind of a creative effect but all my fine tuning now i've set the camera up for my exposure all my fine tuning is done using the exposure compensation dial and this helps me retain detail in the highlights to intensify shadow areas to make the colors really pop and if the lights behind me i'll typically set it to one stop under by default simply on the exposure compensation dial one stop underexposed and this just gives me a lovely vibrancy to to the colors now with certain cameras like the the most of the fujifilm x series cameras the great thing is you've got all your exposure settings you've got the exposure triangle all here on the top of the camera on the top plate and you don't need to delve into menus and buttons on the back to change things and that's what i really love about these cameras but yeah having said all that if you do come across a situation that doesn't work for those settings then yeah change them yeah i'm not saying that this has to be this isn't uh the be all and end-all change them but then change it back to your walk-around settings when you need to keep it simple so other settings white balance set it to auto keep it simple dynamic range i will set it to 100 because i never trust auto dynamic range i use matrix metering some street photographers use spot metering but i think it takes too much time and it takes your focus away from what really matters which is focusing on the moment talking about focusing in terms of focusing i tend to switch off the autofocus and use manual focus using the zone focusing technique and unfortunately we haven't really got enough time today to explain this fully but you'll find loads of blogs about it loads of videos on youtube that explain this technique and i would thoroughly recommend using it i never use autofocus however good it is i use it all the time and it really works zone focusing check it out finally on camera settings in terms of film format i usually shoot raw although i occasionally use some of the the fujifilm film simulations such as across or classical neg classic neg which i think are gorgeous but for me it tends to be raw all the way so my next tip uh get over your fears of street photography most of us have some level of discomfort with photographing people in the street and we all deal with it in different ways some people fight the feeling and shoot away regardless some people just give up and start shooting something different like landscapes or still lifes maybe street photography is not for them but others will learn a new set of skills to help them deal with any feelings of difficulty and here are a few ways in which you can minimize your fears of shooting on the streets and invest plenty of time in working on this the more you do it the more comfortable you'll feel practice practice practice so firstly make street photography a habit the more you're out there doing it the better you'll feel about it and this practice does lead to a sense of comfort and and ease secondly work quickly take your shot and move on don't linger and work quietly if your camera has bleeps and clicks and blinking lights that can be turned off turn it all off you don't need it for street photography thirdly um this really is a killer tip avoid eye contact you won't find me making eye contact with people on the street you don't need it you'll find this whole thing much easier if you don't make eye contact with people and this is before during and after the shot okay fourthly always have confidence in the belief that you're not doing anything wrong this is really important you're not doing anything wrong legally morally or ethically and you need to keep telling yourself this you'll certainly be more confident if you know the law uh street photography in a public place in the uk is perfectly legal and you don't need anyone's permission to take their picture and again there is loads of stuff available out there on this [Music] but just read up and just make sure that you you are confident about it but you don't need anybody's permission you have perfect full rights to take pictures of people on the streets without their permission so tip number eight it's all about perfection and i suggest you forget about it okay chasing perfection will hold you back and you'll be concentrating on the wrong things and i guess this is why street photography often doesn't do well in camera club competitions many judges just can't cope with things that are not perfect getting the shot the moment is what matters and here's a quote from gary winogram which i think sums this whole thing up so tip number nine only use one lens for street photography use the same lens all the time get to know that lens intimately so that you instinctively know what it's seeing so that you understand how it describes the world my ideal lens for street photography is 35 mil in full frame terms so uh something like the 23 three mil on this fujifilm camera is just about perfect you just don't need masses of lenses okay you might want to pack a if you have interchangeable lenses pack a wider lens in your bag because that's sometimes more fun uh but 35mm in full frame terms is about as long as i would go so why why do i shoot wide angle well a lens of of say 35 mil isn't too far from what the human eye sees which is roughly a 70 degree angle of view so when people look at your pictures taken with this lens they're looking at reality a wide angle will always get you physically closer to your subject as well and this often brings more emotion and intimacy into the shot and it really does come out in that shot so on to my final tip for today um that is make sure that you do things that inspire you you've got to inspire yourself don't get obsessed with gear most photographers me included we love our gear and we love buying all the new stuff and buying more stuff and more and more stuff and here i am in my loft i've i can see from here seven bags i've probably got more in storage we don't need all this gear most cameras whatever your camera is will do the job really well for you but make sure you read lots of books spend your money on books like the two by me that i mentioned earlier visit galleries do workshops travel analyze the work of the greats there's just so much there to absorb and a lot of it will it will just help make you a better street photographer take it all in well that just about wraps it up uh i hope you found this useful uh here are my contact details if you'd like to know more about me or about fujifilm do check out some of these links if you fancy doing a street photography workshop i do about 60 to 70 of them every year in the uk and overseas and i'd love to have you aboard so just please do check out my uh my website streetsnappers.com and also my youtube channel which is 100 street and packed with tips and inspiration well that's all from me i hope you enjoyed it and uh i hope to see you again soon enjoy the rest of the show

Channel: StreetSnappers // Brian Lloyd Duckett

Views: 70,875

Rating: 4.9408064 out of 5

Keywords: street photography, street photographer, street photography workshops, urban photography, street photography course, street photography videos, learn street photography, documentary photography

Id: tA_yrLr_1DQ

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020