How To START STREET PHOTOGRAPHY in 2020

for many of us when the world lock turns are eating off and we are starting to venture out again some people who mean it's time to stop shaving time to interact with other humans again however for me in for you it means it's time to start venturing out and doing some street photography once again and in this video I want to answer a question that I've been asked many times and that is where do you even start in street photography like I want to do it now but where do I start what do I do to just get going before begin let's quickly identify what street photography is overall and now everyone's got their own opinions but just as a general overall what the street photography actually mean to avoid any confusion going forwards to me simply means taking photos in an urban environment of everything included within that environment at a specific moment in time therefore almost documenting what that urban environment looks like now in terms of styles there are many different styles of street photography ranging from really sort of gritty black-and-white documentary type stuff all the way to really clean you know polished fine art type photography and in terms finding which style is right for you to be honest that just takes time and effort and you just need to keep doing it and keep repeating keep fine-tuning until you figure out what works for you and just run with that and the final most important point there are some very opinionated people on the internet who will tell you what street photography is and why isn't in their opinion and if you don't agree with them they will bring you down they will tell you you're wrong just that they can bring themselves up and make themselves feel more important and like they know what they're talking about avoid those people block them ignore them unfollow them because you just don't need that especially when you're starting out so yeah just forget all of that and do what you want to do street photography is unpredictable but you can literally go out right for 30 minutes and come home with five good images also you can go out for five hours and come back with nothing so there's really no sort of like direct correlation with regards to time you put in verses the results you get out obviously the better you get the more good results you will get but as an overall yeah there's no correlation to put it further into perspective ask any good photographer that you know online whoever in street photography and landscape photography anything where the elements are out of your control and they will tell you 12 good images a year by good I mean images that you can put in a gallery or you can print 12 of those a year is a very very good result and finally you reframe your mind and your attitude towards street photography or any photography in general so rather than going out and putting the pressure on yourself saying okay I need to come back with these many photos just go out for a nice walk okay and if you come home some pictures it's a bonus if you don't come home with any pictures well guess what you've gone for a nice walk you've done some exercise and you can have a pizza or something now to celebrate now let's talk about some boring stuff I'm not a lawyer this is not legal advice this is just my opinion for my research I've done I did do a whole video about this separately so off link to below basically in the UK if you're on public land you can take pictures of whatever you want if you're in private land in theory you need a permit but to be able to view many places in London they are private even though they're clearly like you'd think a public like Canary Wharf in the lot tourists go there so you can take photos there in many cases you will be fine just be ready to get hassled by security if you turn up with a massive camera and a gimbal and all that sort of stuff also what you want to do with those photos has a huge impact on what type of like a permit you might need so for example if you're just putting on Instagram or in a gallery or for artistic purposes you don't need anything really however if you want to say street photography even if it's on public land and there's people you can recognize or private property that you can recognize such as buildings you might need various model releases to be able to use it commercially and that's a whole separate thing which I'm not going to get into this video but it's just something to keep in mind now as for the ethical side of stuff to be honest view that really depends on your own sort of morals and opinions now I personally do is I don't take any photos of people are in vulnerable positions such as homeless or disabled things like that also if I have kids in my photos I make sure that they're hidden as in they're hyper selected or you can't see their face clearly and generally speaking I don't want anyone in my photo to look bad so if I show my photo to someone they look at my god that's disgusting I kind of failed now I know all of this content really off-putting but honestly just don't overthink about it as long as you don't go into someone's private property start taking photos and then if they get funny about it you get funny about it you should be fine anyway in London within reason is not a problem and the only time people really bother you is if you're like pointing your camera at you know CCTV cameras in the big building or the doors or anything like that so as long as you use common sense you wouldn't have any problems so what about if you get stopped you're walking around taking pictures it feels great and then someone you took picture of or security come up to you and be like what are you doing what you do then and to be honest with you this is one of the biggest things that sort of prohibits people from really diving into the genre because they are not scared for their like apprehensive about getting stopped and to be honest with you I completely understand it because it can be quite intimidating because yeah usually when people stop you they are questioning you as if you're doing something wrong so yeah I can definitely see how this yeah how this can seem very intimidating to start with so to put things into a bit of perspective I've been doing the street photography for quite a few years okay and I've been going into London at least once a week and taking photos for hours at a time and in all of that time like tens or hundreds of thousands of photos I've only been stopped three times okay and all those three times were by security guards and not by just normal members of the public every time normal members of the public did sort of look at me or cloth while I was doing usually we're just like a snice polite smile oh sorry I was in the shot or hope it was a good shot so what do you do if you do get stopped by a normal member of the public if you've taken that photo well generally speaking just be really open be really honest with them about what you're doing you're a street photographer this is your hobby you're taking pictures of the city you show them the picture you've taken of them show them your work say your Instagram quickly just to show them that you know like some weirdo and in 99.9% of cases they will be happy because they're like okay can using it for fun and then I'll go a step further and say some what's your email address that will show into the user name I'll send you this photo once I've done with it and then most people are coming to anyone in their right mind you'll be looking I don't want now and she get stopped by security just be completely open and honest with him say those are taking pictures as a hobby I'm a street photographer to take pictures around London and that's it and honestly 99.9% of cases they will not bother you anymore they might ask you look don't take pictures of the doors over there don't have pictures of the cameras over there which is fair enough you know we live in weird times but yes seriously you have nothing to worry about okay as long as your motives are good okay as long as you're not trying to do something weird you haven't got anything to worry about so this helicopters gained quite loud so I'm probably gonna bugger off but basically for this bit don't let the fear of someone stopping you stop you from going out and taking pictures because in 99.9% of cases your interactions will be positive and chances are you will probably never even get stopped please remember there's no such thing as a bad light it's just different light which look different and create a different result obviously soft golden light that you will get at sunrise or sunset will give the most pleasing result overall however don't dismiss mid day harsh life because if you expose all the harsh light you can get some really nice abstract photos with loads of deep black shadows and really soft nice and bright highlights in the same way don't dismiss boring cloudy days because you can use boring cloudy days to create really soft moody black-and-white photos as well as anything with skin tones so portraits anything skin tone related will look much better on a cloudy day because the cloud is effectively a child softbox so the takeaway here is go ahead and there's many different conditions as possible find what you like the most and then just focus on that but also don't forget to practice in urban lighting conditions so that you can take photos regardless of the lighting conditions I've said no weather if you don't [Music] subjects are a very personal thing and can range from anything like an old newspaper on a table all the way to a cityscape everyone has their own preferences for subjects and over time you will as well now even though it's not for me to tell you what's a good or a bad subject what I can do is share my approach and then you can make your own conclusions as to why I've picked this approach so I will photograph everything that you would find in the city taxis buses people buildings streets newspapers literally everything and the reason for that is quite simple I want to document the city as a whole and not just focus on one or two specific things about that city so this is your first time and you're just starting out I would actually recommend this approach okay photograph everything okay if you see something you think I want to take a picture of it take a picture of it over time what you'll find is there'll be certain things that you gravitate to the most so let's say Street portraits you might really enjoy doing and then maybe focus just on that and honestly there is something to be said for getting very good at one specific type of street photography rather than being like meat of you know a bit of everything as for compositions that's an entire topic in itself however for this video let me just quickly give you three things you can start using right away the first one is the rule of thirds I'm sure you've heard of it before basically you take the frame split it into like nine squares or rectangles and basically whatever they crisscross which is in third of the frame that's when you want to have your subject or a point of interest the second thing is leaving lines and leaving lines basically means that whatever your subject is there is something in the frame that would lead the viewers attention to your subject so for example in this frame that we've got here that building is of slightly pointing towards me leading sort of the viewer towards me finally is framing and framing is where you take your subject and then you put them within something else to capreit therefore no driving your viewers attention to that subject again if you take this as an example I've got the building there I've got a building there that friends me because behind my head is just kite [Music] the following two techniques are very basic but they're fantastic for starting out and even at any level they work so the first one is called phishing and as name suggests you basically find the composition in a particular location where the light is good everything sort of works and then you just wait for the right subject to come into the frame roughly where you want to be then fire off a burst of images and then hopefully there's one there that you like this is a very tried and tested method one thing I'd say though is don't hang around the same area too long it looks a bit weird and it's a bit of a waste of time my limit is about five to ten minutes I mean if it's really good I might stay longer but if nothing has come through I'll use this my phone take a picture of it now I've got the date at the time the GPS coordinates and what it looks like so that I could come back in the future and see if I can get this photo again the second technique involves having the camera at just below chest level with the screen filtered up so you can see what's happening then walking around the scene looking down at the screen and framing and taking photos the reason this is such a good beginners method is because it's very easy to just blend in like that because you just end up looking at the tourists like you're taking a video no one really plays attention people generally start paying more attention when the camera is at eye level so if you're looking through the viewfinder and obviously if you're just starting out that can be a bit intimidating so if you use this method like for the first few months until you get really comfortable you'll be off to a very good start and finally let's talk about gear which is arguably everyone's favorite topic however for street photography it's actually the least important thing unlike things like I like things that wildlife photography where you need a massive lens that's worth more than your house for street photography you don't really need that I mean it's a matter of fact you can get away with using your phone obviously I wouldn't recommend it because economically phones are not that comfortable but basically you don't need a really fancy expensive camera and there's a matter of fact if you rock up without an hour 1dx massive lens on usually let stick out like a sore thumb whereas you have like a really compact camera some like when those repo point-and-shoot cameras you'll just completely blend in so regarding lenses you got two options you go zooms and you've got Prime's now there are some people out there that are very vocal about what is a street photography lens my two cents and this is this so first of all both are equally as good as each other they just serve different purposes the zoom lens will be much better when you physically can't move yourself so let's say if you're in the back of a taxi driving around the city a zoom would be much better because you physically can't move as if you're walking around the city then the prime is way better because you stay inconspicuous because it's smaller and lighter so it's easier for you to carry but also it forces you to move around and by moving around you start looking at different compositions and finding different ways to compose the images which will ultimately make you a better photographer also with primes because they're so inconspicuous you can get away with a lot more let's say intimate photos than you otherwise would with a massive zoom lens and finally finally finally primes are much better value for money because you will get generally better image quality for the money you spend and also overall they are cheaper then zoom lenses and I know many people will be asking this question what would I recommend well are they go for an XT 2 or an HD 3 Fuji with 23 35 and 50 mil f2 primes and honestly that's about it enough covered a lot in this video however I think you've now got everything you need to head out start taking some street photos I'm sure you might have some questions so write them down below and I will get back to you and as always thank you so much for watching the video I hope you're doing well if you like it give it a like if you're not subscribed subscribe already for more videos like this hope you have a good day good week good month well I'll see you before fans anyway see you later [Music]

Channel: Roman Fox

Views: 29,293

Rating: 4.9560437 out of 5

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Id: MSB-Hov6msI

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020