How to Get Better at Street Photography

hey guys lucas from i explore here and tonight we're shooting in shibuya and what i want to talk about tonight is as the title of the video states we're going to learn how to get better at street photography how to improve so these aren't going to be tips for how to do street photography they're going to be tips for how to learn street photography so it's like one extra level of abstraction okay so i'm going to talk about a couple of things that i've figured out over the years that work for me and i'm going to hopefully they'll work for you as well all right so let's just jump right to it i explore all right so the first thing that i kind of figured out over the years and that works for me is this idea of learning from the masters so what i recommend is to pick out some great street photographer that you like and emulate that photographer's style now of course that's such an obvious tip and you know i'm not teaching you anything you probably don't already know but more specifically than that i want to talk about how to emulate that photographer's style so one of my favorite photographers probably my number one photographer and street photographer is saul leiter i've mentioned his name many times on the channel and so when i try to learn from somebody like salt lighter and he's not the only one by the way i'm also a big fan of alex webb siegfried hansen uh william engelson there's lots but for tonight i want to focus on one of them which is saul saul's work and the way i approach this is not just like okay i want to shoot like him and keep it vague i try to look through his photos so you know i bought the book i looked through it i appreciate the work and i try to distill down the kind of essence of his work like what are some key criteria that his work always or often has and for me for saw lighter and this is just my opinion it could be different for for you if you like his work and you see something different that's fine for me it comes down to a couple of things one he generally uses a bit longer focal length but that's not the most important thing he definitely likes shooting through things and having a lot of layers in his photos that are compressed so different by the way to contrast with like alex webb who has a lot of layers in his photos but they're not so compressed he tends to shoot a little wider so saw lighter stands back shoots long and has a lot of layers by layers in this case i specifically mean front bucket bokeh that's in front of the subject more so than behind so there'll be something in the foreground like a window some glass or whatever and lastly by doing what i just described he ends up with a very abstract sort of look to the photo so there's a lot of like splashes of color around the frame and things that obscure the actual subject in a certain way not always but that's often the case in a lot of my favorite photos of his okay he also i would say he doesn't show the subject very directly in many cases like it's not like a bruce gilden or tatsu suzuki where it gets right in there and you see people's um you know how is their faces you know right there in the in the frame you know it's much more abstract and indirect often a silhouette or just a hint of a person are visible in his photos he also likes to shoot in bad weather which is something you know not crucial but to me he's using that's important and of course he shoots reasonably enough in the evenings and kind of in difficult lighting conditions again not the main thing so what do i do i analyze somebody's work like that okay in this case i like it and i try to pick out the things that i like and then i try to apply those my work in this case for me the things that i found really useful were this concept of shooting with a bit longer focal lengths which i i often like to shoot on a 40 millimeter so that's already kind of there that's not that long right so sometimes i use a 24 to 70 and shoot even longer like on a 70 millimeter and and the second thing being shooting through things and getting all these kind of compressed layers and blurry areas of abstraction that's that kind of the key takeaways for me okay so i take those things and i try to apply them to my work of course it takes a ton of practice it's not like i'm going to go out and start doing saw lighter photos overnight but i keep that in the back of my mind okay so that's kind of i guess tip number one on how to get better at street photography how to actually learn all right so here there's this kitchen that i've shot countless countless times but you know because the window is kind of grimy and there's a lot of stuff in the foreground i can kind of i have some potential here to do some of that salt lighter stuff that i was talking about to kind of uh you know get some some stuff on the you know i mean honestly it's not that much but just because the window's grimy to me it already adds to that element and you know something else that assault often did in his work is i call him saul like he's my friend obviously i don't know the guy i should say mr lighter or let's say japanese raita the point is what saw lighter often did in his work is the subject would be actually out of focus as well i definitely seen some photos of his where the focus is not so much on the subject subject somewhere in the background a little bit blurry okay again not always but sometimes so again this kind of indirect you know way of shooting the subject and so that's kind of what i tried there with this this kitchen they're already done for the day so it's it's kind of late here in shibuya things are closing up but let's go a little farther over here and look for some other opportunities ah maybe here's one so you see here in the window i can see uh a silhouette of somebody okay so i'm not shooting them but i'm shooting their silhouette in the reflection so it's like two layers of abstraction here where not only am i not shooting them uh you know i'm shooting them as a silhouette so you can't see their face or their exact person but i'm also doing it in the reflection which allows me to put a ton of kind of grime into the image make it more abstract let the the window and the glass sort of take over right and so these are and i love how it's breaking up this man's silhouette actually it's beautiful so these are the kind of things i feel that i really maybe i already did them a little bit before i saw saul leiter's work i would say i've always been drawn to it but when i saw his work it kind of really showed me like wow you could really achieve something so these ideas that i was just like screwing around with and they were maybe not great i was sort of inspired or motivated to go a bit deeper and pursue them harder thinking yeah this is gonna this is gonna be good so here we go i mean get a couple more this is actually really awesome how this is turning out i'm getting like two it's like a prison i'm getting two versions of this guy in two different spots in the frame because of the way the windows are reflecting him okay yeah so again the idea is i learned something from one of the masters um and then i try to apply it to my own work and by doing that that specific thing i don't just go out in a very broad sense i focus on that one specific characteristic i try to distill it down because i rattled off a whole bunch of things about his work like i said bad weather he shot an expired film sometimes there's all these things you know he's the og hipster with the expired film thing so you get the idea there's all these different things but for me i just boiled it down to that specific thing of little bit long lens shooting through stuff to get this abstract quality because that's the main thing i was drawn to so that brings me to kind of main point number two which is this idea of heuristics now heuristics is a fancy word that i like to use to sound smart basically it just means like a series of steps that you take when you identify a particular situation so like an example for me a lot of people who watch this channel know that i like reflections i often put the camera like next to a surface like a piece of glass or something and i like to get that symmetrical reflection i do that all the time that's a heuristic just over the years of shooting i figured out that technique it's pretty straightforward technique honest it's not rocket science to be honest and but now i have that heuristic so it's like i just see oh there's a piece of glass let's try a reflection it may not always work sometimes it looks like crap but i always try it and that was another heuristic just now with the silhouette i kind of developed that heuristic by studying saul leiter's work and paid attention and realizing okay he always does these kind of things i'm going to steal that heuristic and i'm going to apply that heuristic to my work so when i have a it's a reflection again but it's a different kind of reflection it's not a surface symmetrical reflection it's the reflection where i shoot at the glass and i can see something behind there like you know out of the frame but in the glass then i just try that so when i get these opportunities i try and sometimes it turns out really good the silhouettes are another heuristic if i can backlight somebody i mean again that's not rocket science everybody uses silhouettes in photography that's such a common thing but that is a heuristic so you know speaking to the beginners here right if you want to get better try to develop these heuristics so you have certain situations like okay there's backlighting i'll try a silhouette okay it's raining maybe i'll get reflections on the ground right um in a place with a high contrast like a sunny day with big bright shadows or deep shadows i'm gonna underexpose we've done a video about contrast right that video you know the sandal check the card wherever it is that's a heuristic when i'm presented with that kind of high contrast but splotchy light i know what to do i know i'm gonna underexpose by two stops from the uh you know from what whatever the camera meter is you can call that underexposed or not that's a different point watch that video for the details but again it's a heuristic and there are musics for everything you know when i shoot um architecture sometimes i like to turn the camera to create interesting leading lines so that nothing is straight again for me that's a heuristic it's like if i see a lot of dynamic lines i try to put those lines into the corners again heuristics so probably as i explained on this i was showing some of these photos to illustrate my point because we just kind of walked in the circle on the block and i didn't really shoot anything so you get the idea build your heuristics and then when you are presented with cool situations you'll more readily know what to do you'll be better prepared and as you shoot more and more you build up this big repertoire i like to during our workshops off and tell people it's like a toolbox you have a box of tools and for certain situations you know sometimes you need a screwdriver sometimes you need a hammer that's a heuristic okay so build those up and you'll get better at street photography all right so here's an example what's going about heuristics like there's this cool you know advertisement with this uh colorful light right and obviously this can work as a nice silhouette right it's very simple heuristic but it is an example of what i'm talking about so i just know when i see this okay what am i going to try i'm going to let first thing i'm going to try then i'm going to try something else we'll try a more of a salt light arrest thing in just a second i have an idea like i was explaining earlier but let's just do a couple more silhouettes here okay maybe 35 mil yeah around there okay to be honest i'll probably put up the photo i shot here a couple of weeks ago and the rain is a lot cooler than it is right now because there was more color reflecting on you everywhere but again you get the idea okay so tip number three is this idea that it's actually very simple very straightforward and i've talked about this in other videos including our recent video about inspiration i talked about it on rico's channel for one of their videos that we did and that is basically look to other forms of art besides just photography to get ideas this is i think is crucial and what i find a lot of people miss there's this focus on you know what's on instagram what is you know following photographers too closely even great photographers like saw lighter or whatever you gotta go beyond that go into you know movies animation um video games you know other forms of visual art things like uh you know modern art you know abstract art the classics whatever and even beyond visual things such as literature and music as i talked about so i've talked about this before for sure basically you want other kinds of art forms to inform your creative decisions you need all this fuel right it's not about inspiration it's not like i see this works so it inspires me to take similar work it's just about having all that fuel in your brain to just sort of i don't know jog jog something loose the more fuel you have the better but the fuel needs to be diverse that's very important if it's always the same old thing same kind of repetitive stuff on instagram it's not very helpful okay so diversify your inspiration all right so for a change i'm walking backwards while axe was walking forwards because it's really hard on him to hold to hold the camera that way so whatever i'm good so tip number four most important well not most important thing actually the most basic thing but is important and that is you have to practice you have to just do it a lot and a lot and a lot so you take all those things i already talked about and you apply them every day multiple times a week eight hours a day four hours a day all the great photographers i've ever talked to to them it's like a job and for me as well like these days i'm a little bit busy because i'm making like videos and stuff i'm shooting not as much as i'd like but the times where i learned all these things all the times that i've made leaps and big improvements in my work are times where i was shooting constantly multiple times a week five six seven days a week even if just a little bit even if it's just like on the way to something and i take my camera out of my pocket like the ricoh gr you know or even i will say even if i don't have a camera i might stop and admire a scene knowing that okay i could take a photo here i don't have my camera that sucks but i know i could take a photo here i could apply these in these heuristics so you're always training your photographic eye that's the key thing photography 24 7 in terms of your perception and mindfulness right and that's actually it would be a great topic for another video which we're definitely going to do how to do photography without a camera but i think that's something we're going to save for next time alright so for today thank you guys so much for watching i hope you found that informative and useful uh you know it was a bit of a philosophical video but i think when you want to learn something you have to take a bit of a philosophical approach especially something like an art form like photography alright so thanks for watching and i'll catch you guys next time and of course always challenge your eye oh hey guys you're still here wow you must be a huge fan of export to watch all the way to the end of the video we really really appreciate that that's a huge help because it makes our videos more popular because the youtube algorithm cares about these kinds of things but since i have your attention still i hope you know that we do have a patreon and also youtube channel memberships and if you sign up with either of those you could get access to our tokyo photospot map also if you're interested in any of the gear that i use in the videos or also some of the gear that we use to shoot the videos all of the referral links for that stuff is in the description below and if you click on those that also helps us out immensely finally we do sell some merch we have i explore branded t-shirts and also on my own personal homepage i sell prints so if that interests you again links in the description below but just the fact that you guys watched all the way to the end we really appreciate it so thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you guys in the next video

Channel: EYExplore

Views: 17,219

Rating: 4.9405074 out of 5

Keywords: street photography, tokyo photography, tokyo, photography tutorial, photo tutorial, learn photography, photography tips, photography composition, photography workshop, photography lessons, photography ideas

Id: 6oS5cRBkU5k

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021