HOW TO SHOOT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Oh [Music] [Music] I suppose the biggest thing for me is there are so many conflicting rules and regulations if you look on YouTube for instance there's so many very good photographers actually but the information that they can give out to be very often misleading or they've got their way of doing it and that seems to be the only way and that really isn't the case at all [Music] any digital SLR camera the camera your iPhone absolutely anything an actual fact when you first add outward street photography it can be a little bit intimidating throwing one of these in people's faces so more often or not a good way of actually standing out is to use your iPhone and even if you aim at people just smile at the back of the camera and they'll just assume that you are taking a selfie and won't even realize most the time you've even taken a picture the rule is simply this there isn't a right and a wrong lens for street photography so this advantages with one lens over another lens but pretty much any lens will do and if you watch lots of videos on YouTube you will find it certain people will recommend a say for instance a 50 mil prime lens shoot wide open so you playing around with that shallow depth of field a lot of time well that's brilliant and that that does work really really well and you know even I'm I'm happy to suggest doing that as well but of course then you miss out on lots of wide shots so sometimes a 10 or 12 mil wide-angle lens will capture more of the event will tell more of the story will include more people and of course if you improve more people the picture will be busier which is more than likely to pull people back to your image time and time again just to see really what's going on in the image so there isn't a right and wrong lens and a right and wrong camera there just isn't this advantages over one disadvantages over another it's as simple as that [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's a lot of misinformation with regards to which camera sentence to use and which cameras not to use when it comes to street photography so let me just kind of quash a few of those myths right now for first and foremost when you first that off it doesn't really matter don't get too wet up and don't get too carried away with which setting to use we're set not to use simply set your camera to pee or shoot in a fully automatic mode that's my recommendation to you but of course if you want to take it one stage further then think about your shutter speed priority and think about your aperture priority now more often than not when I'm shooting street photography I mean shutter speed priority make sure by the way if you shoot in shutter speed priority or aperture priority make sure you set your ISO to auto if your camera will allow it so let me just explain them when I'm walking around the safer ends is a town or a city I'm in shutter speed priority so now all I need to do is on the dial of my camera is simply give consideration to the shutter speed in the shot shutter speed controls a movement so therefore if I set my camera to let's say an average shutter speed of one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second if you think of that as a hmm as a smiley setting as a setting that you will just capture people walking and talking and just going about their business like a selfie setting one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second for now instantly if you see a skateboarder coming down the path for instance I now have at my disposal the ability in a split second to either slow my shutter speed down and therefore I can pan with the skateboarder an attempt to blur the background out and keep the skateboarder looking very sharp in the image I have the ability to do that or of course on the other hand I can just increase my shutter speed to let's say one thousandth of a second and then just freeze the skateboarder in the frame and I use that quite a lot and I do play around with that once you nail a shot or two then I very quickly I generally go outside of my comfort zone I then instead and say for instance a moving cyclist and a fortieth of a second I then go down to maybe a 20th of a second or a tenth of a second and just play around and see if I can really nail that shot but there's lots of factors to take into consideration how fast they're moving how close they are to you and so on and so forth but don't get too wet up with it but my advice to you would be either try shutter speed priority or aperture priority now we've already discussed shutter speed priority so let me very quickly discuss about aperture priority we mentioned earlier about shooting with us 250ml prime lens if you have a nifty 50 then that nifty 50 will shoot at 1.8 which is quite a wide aperture so when you photograph people then as long as they're fairly close to the camera that will offer you quite a shallow depth of field therefore it'll make the subject that you focus on really stand out in that frame but you know this lens is out there that's capable of 1.4 1.2 and of course wider apertures again so that's something else to give consideration to as well but don't just get single-minded about the whole thing don't just naturally assume what I should be doing that is actually shooting wide open all the time and what I should be doing is shooting with a fast shutter speed all the time play around and be creative Oh [Music] [Music] couple of tips I'll give is one tip I would it's difficult to get your head around this sometimes but always try and photograph a scene with a person in it and don't photograph a person in a scene in other words get your composition let's look at safer as a graffiti on a wall which is a a classic thing to shoot when you're shooting street photography you might see let's say for instance a sexy lady on a wall and then try and match you up then with somebody that walks into the frame whether it's somebody completely opposite so negatives and positives really work or whether it's another sexy person and that's two positives and that also works but trying set your scene up and then photograph somebody as they walk into it as opposed to just to get a camera and photographing somebody as they're walking down the street because that doesn't necessarily work it doesn't work very well at all that another good tip I'll give you as well is to shoot for black and white black and white works really well for street photography if you look back at some of the classical and street photography pictures going back over the many years of photography then you'll see most of a black and white now obviously I know that's because a lot of them will take them Yoga for color but black and white seems to be quite an ageless form of taking photographs and that's why we still do it now my day-to-day working like we shoot an awful lot of black and white weddings we shoot off a lot black and white portraits of them stating obvious people love it when you take pictures in black and white and of course there is a massive difference between just taking a picture and turning it into black and white or shooting for black and white but I'll make a video on that over the next few weeks and I'll explain that a bit better but yeah shoot for black and white so let me explain what I mean if you've got four football supporters stood you know maybe having a pint a beer or something one wearing a red top green blue and yellow top then of course they look as if they're odd in the frame or they might dominate the frame because the colors are so strong the minute you convert your picture to black and white then of course these different color shirts that they're wearing will just translate to different shades of gray and now of a sudden it looks as if not only are the the guys meant to be there in the frame but they're also complement probably the background which will also be in black and white without stating the obvious so that worked really well for me black and white black and white black and white always been the one who's keeping the kinda guy you chill while others her I didn't know that I've been the fool I've been telling lies bad something real but I know love is based on honesty kept thinking love should feel no eat daddy just you it's me cuz I was made to be free [Music] [Applause] and I am made to be [Music] I am made to be [Music] well that's quite a difficult one to explain it's about moved it's about emotion it's about just capturing I suppose people or things happening in a very natural way realistically it's a bit like documentary photography you just documenting what's going on on a an ordinary day for certain people look for interest in subjects they look for very difficult to say odd people because it's all subjective what people actually means we're odd to some people I'm odd to a lot of people but you know what I mean not all of us walk around the street with bright pink spiky hair with piercings all over their face and all over their body and tattoos to look for interest in subjects again of no problem with that the very interesting subject even people that might look really miserable homeless people obviously be respectful to them of course more often than not they'll actually pose for you they'll like a cigarette or for you sometimes you might have to buy him a cigarette of course but yeah that but they make great subjects where possible avoid people in the centre of a frame just like you would do when shooting normally think composition think rules of thirds think lead in lines it's just standard standard practice precaution when you're on the street you've gotta think fast you've got to think on the fly and you know you won't always get it right that's the key you won't always get it right what makes for a very good picture as well in terms of a subject matter I've mentioned it earlier but think about opposites its opposites work really really well I mentioned earlier about if you've got a beautiful picture of a sexy girl on the wall then all of a sudden if somebody walks by that's a complete opposite then that will work really well black and white works really well without stating the obvious happy and sad works you know what I mean think contrasty [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] a real tip that I will give you is to try and look inconspicuous sometimes but not suspicious and that's a massive difference more often or not I'm not gonna hide myself I'm six foot four - more often or not I'm happy to stand there with a camera proud in my hand so people can clearly see what my intention is are not just shooting it under the arm or shooting through the legs or pretending to shoot when you don't shoot because if somebody catches you doing that then you're likely to have a bit of confrontation and that's never good for anybody so my advice is and even sometimes you know when people are walking fast you don't really want to smile at them to try and get them to smile back because that's not natural that's not what street photography is all about but sometimes there are some greats in the past that well actually see oh wait wait and make someone look and all of a sudden is that who's speaking to me like that and it's that look on their face now you've got to be a bit of a brave person to do that but there are hat street photographers that actually work like that and they work really well [Music] [Applause] [Music] you must admit that's pretty cool this is a serious beer this is the bit we get asked about over and over again what is the law where do we stand legally why standing in the street taking pictures well it's very simple actually it's very black-and-white is the law in this country states that if you're on public public land then you're entitled to photograph anything you want there are a couple of exceptions to that without stating obviously MOT and I wouldn't recommend standing taking photographs of police stations and so on and so forth but legally you can obviously not the M or D and that's the only really exception to that rule but of course 2018 more often than not you standing in the street you know wielding a camera around will generally make people feel a little bit suspicious of you and that's really annoying it's very very very annoying it's almost like labeling all photographers as bad people so know your rights and your rights a like I said earlier if you're on public land you're entitled to photograph anything you wish with the odd exception if you do find yourself in a position where you're being confronted by somebody whose picture you've just taken the most important thing is just be very courteous and smile and to show them the picture on the back of the camera and you know offer to email it to them or if you feel that they're still being quite agitated by your actions then offer to delete the picture it's no big deal you can grab that picture again it really is no worries well that's an easy one for me to answer because this is genre of photography that I absolutely love and the reason why I love it is because I suppose there are no rules really or there are too many rules to worry about in other words you could be rough around the edges with street photography you can take pictures that are slightly slanted the horizon doesn't have to be level I mean the quality of the image doesn't have to be perfect you can see that in some of the images that I've taken more often or not you sit back in your desk you look at them when it comes to post-production it's a case of oh if only I stood here phony I stood there but that's not what street photography is street photography is about now it's about spontaneity if you haven't got the correct sayings in your camera hey-ho sometimes it adds to it sometimes it doesn't add to it but that's the beauty of street photography [Music] you

Channel: Gary Gough (Pro Photographer)

Views: 436,973

Rating: 4.8868356 out of 5

Keywords: street photography, street photos, beginner street photoraphy, photography, street, tips and tricks, tips for street photography, street photography techniques, street photography tips, street photography tutorial, street photography tips and tricks, street portraits, photo tutorial, street photography tips and techniques, how to do street photography, learn street photography

Id: bdgiXPI-DZk

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 28 2018