Street Photography masterclass with Nick Turpin

hello i'm nick turpin i've been a photographer based in london for over 30 years i've worked in newspapers and i've worked in advertising but i'm most known for being a street photographer over the next 30 minutes or so i'm going to help you to take better photographs and i'm also going to introduce you to the practice of street photography i'll be explaining what street photography is and why you might want to do it i'll also be explaining some approaches and strategies that you can use on the streets and i'll be asking you to go out and try some of those for yourself everything we talk about today will apply to your picture making whether you're using a smartphone or an expensive camera the principles would pretty much be the same photography is just a medium like painting film or music at the end of the day you need to decide how you want to use it what you want to say with it from very early on i was fascinated by the way that the photography recorded the world and i knew that i wanted to make documents of the extraordinary sometimes the things i photographed were extraordinarily beautiful or extraordinarily surreal or extraordinarily funny either way i chose them out of the stream of life because i thought they were special and i used photography to elevate them keep them and share them editing is at the heart of all good photography the camera is kind of space time editing tool that's how i see it you edit you edit space with the rectangle the frame that you throw around a scene and you edit the time with the shutter button the moment that you choose to record now ultimately the camera is just a dumb box has a hole on one side and a sensitive recording material on the other film or a sensor but it has no vision of its own the camera absolutely needs a smart human being behind it for anything magical to happen one of my favorite quotes about photography is by ansel adams who said the most important piece of equipment or the most important part of a camera is the six inches behind it i was attracted to street photography because for me it's in the sweet spot of what the camera does best the camera's best trick which is to freeze a moment of reality for us to hold and inspect for days weeks years decades to come my own street photography uses the camera to record how we humans live day to day in huge modern cities i've photographed commuters returning home from work at night at the end of a long day uh in my in my on the night bus project and i photograph the commercialization of public space in my autos project where i've photographed advertising reflected in cars passing through piccadilly circus and i also photograph constantly the unusual events that i find on our everyday streets so what is street photography simply it's candid photography in the public realm it's unstaged and it's unmanipulated it's observational photography you can do street photography anywhere that the public come and go freely so this can be the streets the public streets but it can also be parks it can be beaches it could be galleries museums anywhere the public come and go freely and you can observe and document public life one of the main hurdles about doing street photography i think is that most people are very nervous about photographing somebody else without asking first without getting their permission and i think one of the important things about street photography is to remember that basically you're just recording public life for history you're not taking anything from somebody um you're not hurting anybody or exploiting them in any way you're making a photograph of something in a public space that anybody standing there would just be able to see from a legal perspective this change is always different in different countries but in most countries in the world and particularly most democracies you can photograph anything that you can see from a public place so because you want to observe and photograph people and remain fairly unnoticed you don't want to bruise the scene as the street photographer joe mayevitz describes it rather aptly it's quite useful to have fairly small camera and not not to go out with too much equipment you don't really want to look like a photographer you just want to look like a passing person or tourist in the street so i work with a small mirrorless camera like this i can actually use this with one hand if i want to i don't have to focus it's auto focus and very quick and quiet to use you need to be able to turn the flash gun off nothing gives you away in the street like a flash going off but equally using a mobile phone is a very good way of starting with street photography mobile phones are so ubiquitous in a public place now that you can you can actually start doing your street photography with the phone and perhaps move up um to a small small digital camera you know afterwards if you if you find that you're enjoying it when i go out shooting on the streets i take as little as possible i'll usually take one camera with one lens a few batteries and memory cards just enough to keep me going during the day some comfortable shoes uh usually a shower proof uh you know mac of some sort of waterproof in my rucksack um a bottle of water just to keep me hydrated and then often i will set out and walk walk several miles at a time just focusing on on what's happening on the street looking for the next picture i think people can get very caught up with the equipment and i actually think in many ways the equipment is probably one of the least important aspects of street photography it's very much about your vision the potential that you can see in in a scene on the street and how you how you position yourself and record that and frame it but in terms of cameras something small as i said before but also a shortish lens you know we tend not to do street photography with a big long lens often you're more invisible if you're close to the action if you're part of the crowd if you stand back with a longer lens and bigger equipment um you often you often you know get observed you often stick out more so take one lens the equivalent of a 35 millimeter on a dslr a full frame camera or 23 on a on an aps camera aps-c camera nothing too long and that will give you plenty of depth of field so you get everything sharp and then also um you know you're going to want to freeze the action when you're out on the street so i usually shoot at 500th of a second or more if i have a camera if you're working with a smartphone that's going to freeze the movement nearly every time for you um and i also don't worry about um the the speed the sensitivity of the of the camera so i will set my iso sometimes at 800 or a thousand iso modern cameras are absolutely fine for that and that will allow you to freeze things and get enough depth of field to get everything sharp when you see something special and wonderful happening on the street so let's have a little think about how street photographs are constructed how they're built are they just things that you find or can you can you create them is there a kind of formula that you can perhaps use um now this photograph is super simple there's literally only two elements in the picture there's the line in trafalgar square and there's the foot uh of somebody sitting sitting on the lions on the lions plinth in front there now you can see there's a kind of dialogue between these two things these two elements the foot and the lion and the dialogue kind of creates uh an implied narrative and implied new meaning that wasn't really there and what's nice about this is that the photographer has just brought together these two elements in the frame and presented them to you as the viewer and the viewer uh puts the two things together and in in their mind and they come up with this new implied narrative with it which you know for some maybe you know may have some humor in it so this is quite an interesting way of working a lot of street photographs are constructed and built in this way now this is a super simple example and and you know good street photographers build very complex pictures with lots of dialogues going on between things on the left and the right of the frame between things at the front and the back of the frame that create you know very complex and enjoyable um you know image for the viewer to decode so i thought i'd just show you this one so you can see exactly how that was made here's a picture of the photographer taking the shot and you can see here just how much he's cut out he's he's reduced this image to the bare bones just just the simplest of things and often making a simple picture is a very effective strategy he's cut out all the buildings behind by crouching down and looking up he's cut out the rest of trafalgar square he's even cut out the girls sitting on the plinth apart from from one foot so when you see a scene think to yourself do i need all of this where is the picture in this scene often it's going to be you know in there somewhere and you have to frame it get in there and frame it with your camera so let's quickly look at a couple of other examples you know here's something very simple this is in leicester square and you can see the council have put a little white cross on the paving slabs that are cracked and need to be replaced um and so that's the first thing i saw and i just hovered around there waiting for somebody to walk across them now that that person walking away their their legs they're totally unconnected to those crosses they don't even know probably they haven't even noticed that they're walking over them it's it's the photographer that has put these two things together to bring a little bit of humor or kind of implied little story there and that's another very simple example and something that you could find you know fairly easily on the street when you're out with your camera here's another shot from trafalgar square you can see i was waiting to cross the road here and i saw a girl walk past me with a bag with what looked like two eyes on the back of it and she stopped there to cross the road and i noticed that there was the look sign on the floor and that as she walked away i grabbed a quick shot because i could see there's a lovely connection between the eyes and what eyes do which is which is look so really again there's just two elements in the picture but when you combine them they create create a new and humorous meaning and here's one last shot in this sort of vein here you can see there's just a wall with some graffiti of some basketball players on the wall and this is actually a picture i took in los angeles but you can find these sorts of things you know in the east end of london in brick lane graffiti on the wall that kind of thing and some road some road construction workers have left a coil of cable or pipe just where the ball is landing so the two things are totally unconnected um it's only the photographer who's put these two things together um to create something humorous the fact that the the workman is walking past then is just being held back quite nicely by the basketball player as well adds another little element to it that's beginning to get just a little more complicated now one of the things i'm going to ask you to do is to kind of stake out an interesting background find a really lovely piece of architecture or maybe a shop front or a graffiti or an archway or something that you can frame very nicely with that rectangle of your viewfinder so here is a scene in london um this is in just off charming cross road and you can see here that um it's a very colorful scene and i've framed it quite carefully you can see there's a yellow square in the top right hand corner there's a yellow square in the bottom left-hand corner and then i've included as many colors as i could there's a green wheelie bin there's some blue barriers there i also knew that occasionally a bus would come past there and add a you know fifth or sixth color red color there i also liked the arrows on the vinyl on the building on the left pointing to the left of the picture so i included those so i tried to make a frame really that was just beautifully composed but then i needed something to bring it to life so i waited there probably for over an hour photographing people walking and moving through this space trying to capture somebody in exactly the right place so what i was looking for here is a photograph that uses the frame beautifully to come to compose you know superb picture but also to use the shutter button to choose exactly the right moment what cartier-bresson might have referred to as a decisive moment so eventually i got this guy who walked in and as an added bonus he was in high vis overalls which brought another you know another color element to the picture now he passed just as the bus was passing in the background and i took two or three frames quite quickly you know sometimes when you see something that's wonderful your heart kind of leaps and you just don't hesitate don't think too much take as many pictures as you can if it feels instinctively good just shoot you can always edit it later and i chose this frame because i like the words on the bus i like the way they look like they're coming out the back of his head like thoughts so this is the kind of picture which i'm out there trying to make something that's sort of complex and beautiful and ticks a lot of boxes for me so if you go out in the city with your camera it's very easy to do lots of walking and not much picture taking so one of the things i'm going to suggest is that you choose quite a small area to work in this is going to focus your vision focus your mind on what is happening there what's coming and going now obviously you want to choose a fairly busy place to give yourself a bit of a chance um but you know somewhere like oxford circus piccadilly circus buckingham palace places where people come and go regularly um you know some of the bridges in london are quite good for this that would be the kind of place that i would choose so what i'm going to show you here are some little sets of three pictures from different places so this first one is from buckingham palace and i worked in buckingham palace for three or four days uh looking for interesting things kind of collecting pictures looking for interesting things that were happening so there's this guy with the flag nicely lit from behind um i got in the crowds here's a young guy taking a picture and holding his coffee in his mouth so that he's got his hands free and i got nice and close to him i saw him do it once and then he did it a few more times and i managed to get a picture and then i noticed when the horse guards came past buckingham palace every single person in the crowd took a photograph and there was this kind of rather lovely lovely view of everyone with their phones so there's three pictures from one place and i think this can be very successful let's have another look let's have another little look at this um okay here are three pictures all from piccadilly circus so i'm standing in piccadilly circus here's a group of lads i think on a stag weekend all walking past with their london t-shirts on i thought that was a little bit unusual i followed them and tried to get as many of the t-shirts in the shot as i could here's a picture of a bus that came past every 10 or 15 minutes every time i saw the bus approaching i really liked the architecture on it the way that it juxtaposed with the architecture in regent street and i i took probably 50 60 pictures of this bus over a number of days and eventually something nice extra happened this lady crossed the road with her phone the phone was the same color as the bus and she held it up to her to her face covering her eyes and i got the picture that i've been envisaging all along and then here's a picture of a limousine passing with three girls in and so you can see uh sometimes you'll be you know you choose a spot you can look around you at the people you can look up up at the windows around you see what's happening there but also in the road you know things are driving past you all the time and there's interesting pictures to be made there as well so by choosing one place and focusing your attention there you start to see things which you probably wouldn't see if you just walked continually uh you know on a route across the city so i'll come out into the city to do some street photography but before we do street photography i'm going to give you a few general tips about photography and and using your cameras just to get you started so most people when they see something they like they grab their camera they put it to their face they push the button and a photograph is made they don't really think about the decisions that they're making when they do that so what decisions are you making when you take a photograph the camera viewfinder is a rectangle and you throw that rectangle around the scene that you're photographing it has sides it has top and bottom and corners i want you to think about where those where those sides in the top and the bottom the corners of the picture fall against the scene you're photographing sometimes you might want to move backwards or forwards just to to make a better composition a little bit left and right think about you know framing things beautifully the other decision you're making is is the moment that you choose with the shutter button so once you've got your beautiful composition people are coming and going things are moving in the frame think very carefully about the moment that you choose to make your exposure now i'm convinced that best street photographs have those two decisions that beautiful frame that perfect moment both made beautifully within the same frame the city is a very busy chaotic and noisy place and i think as photographers one of the things we're trying to do is to put a nice moment of order out of that chaos and one of the main tools that we can use to do that is is the composition um so when i'm out framing up a nice scene i see a scene that i that i really like i put i put the camera to my face and i try and keep the verticals in the scene uh upright i keep them parallel to the verticals of the side of my frame and one of the ways i do this is by not tilting the camera i don't tilt the camera down or up if i need to move up and down then i'll keep the camera absolutely horizontal but i'll crouch down instead and this allows me to to make a much more deliberate and controlled composition so here's a very simple scene this is the side of the bank of england it has some beautiful columns on the side it's a very graphic really nice composition it's a nice stage for me to watch so i'm going to frame up this and wait for people to walk in and out of the scene so i'm going to try and keep those columns vertical not look up and down there's a nice white line in the road and as people walk through the frame i'm going to snap a picture when they're just in the right place between the columns keeping the columns upright and just waiting for people to walk in here comes the corner of the bus but i actually quite like that that's quite a nice frame often things will happen which you're not expecting but you can take advantage of them so i'm just being patient just standing here got my composition i'm not moving from the spot i know when the right people move in it's going to make a nice picture i'm just watching this waiting for people to walk in and out of the frame trying to capture them in a nice place between the columns you can see the bottom of the frame there's a white line in the road i'm trying to keep that white line parallel with the bottom of the frame of the camera here's a guy walking in i'm just going to grab him as he's between the columns here's another guy walking in just gonna go in there there and there here's a lady with a suitcase which i rather like i'm just going to get her there so i've come around to the back of the bank of england i like to work in one small area when i come down for an hour or two and it's just really explore it and around the back here is this beautiful archway now the arch is very tall so it's a bit too tall for me to get in my composition this way so i'm going to turn my camera upright into portrait format so i can fit it all in i really like the pale stone work i like the traffic light here the black traffic light look how graphic that is against the pale the pale wall so i'm going to shoot here i'm going to frame up my picture and wait for some people to walk in now a good sign is if you frame up your scene and it's already a beautiful picture right there without any people that means you've pretty much got 50 of your shot already and you just need a person to walk into frame to complete it so here are some people walking into frame i'm gonna just let them get into the archway those two at the end are quite nice quite nice as they disappear so i'm gonna spend a little time here waiting here's a guy walking across the archway so once you've got your frame you need to be patient you need to watch it for a little while and see what comes your way so he was very nice the guy was completely in black which is nice against the pale stonework the same as the traffic light being black against pale stonework just nice contrasty images just aesthetically and visually pleasing one things i've noticed is that really great photographs happen whilst you're out making good ones you have to be out there taking pictures on the street for the occasional really great thing to happen so here we have a nice composition when people walk through it's a really good photograph but it's not a great photograph what i need is somebody with a top hat with a bunch of flowers or just something unusual something really unexpected which would just elevate this into something really great very a very simple example of putting two things together to make a new meaning to make a little juxtaposition and this is kind of a bit of the bread and butter of a lot of street photography when you're starting out is to use a sculpture and here we are beside a bank with a beautiful carved sculpture i'm going to try and capture people passing beneath it try and make a nice interaction between the two so i'm going to frame up i've got my shutter speed at 500th of a second so i can freeze people moving past lady in the mask walking past below there i'm standing in the road slightly sometimes to be a bit wary i'm looking up and down the street to see who's coming so again i needed a bit of patience here waiting for the right people to come to come past so i want to frame this quite tightly that's nice a couple holding hands so as soon as somebody else walks into the picture there is a relationship between them and the sculpture there's a dialogue between the two elements in the frame it's a very simple street photograph but [Music] i'm just watching seeing who comes in out of the frame [Music] we're keeping it quite simple quite tight just the two elements so you could do this with anything figurative you could do it with an advertising poster with a sculpture like this in your town center or you could do it with a piece of graffiti anything that's figurative which could have a relationship between itself and a passing person being quite a nice place to stop and try and make some pictures so i was just coming back across the bridge uh and i noticed this nice social distancing blue line and coming towards me with the gut was a guy in a blue outfit which looked the same sort of blue as this uh so i grabbed the camera turned it on its side and took a picture with the two the guy walking along the blue line and that's the kind of thing where you see something at the last minute you make the connection in your head and you have to make the picture really really quickly and it's a nice little juxtaposition just two elements um but there's a dialogue between them which creates a new meaning so one of the strategies i like to use when i'm out taking pictures on the street is to just focus on one little area i try and find someone that's reasonably busy that has a little bit of color i like the spire here there's lots of street furniture um so if you're choosing one one spot you tend to make more pictures it focuses your your picture making and your concentration um otherwise you tend to do more walking than photography if you're not careful so there's even there's even a nice little arrangement of things here i like these bins the bicycle for the signs on this post there the spire behind um it's actually a nice little composition to make on this little corner that i'm watching there's a person walking into frame some more people it's getting a little bit busy girl in blue dress is nice adds a bit of color so i like this bit of stone work here it's very angular fits into the frame very nicely the windows behind as well makes a nice foil if people walk past as well you know it's a nice place for people to walk in front of little gap there where people walk to the top of the stairs there's someone now look just there there's a guy coming with headphones on who's going to walk in front of this bit of stonework guy coming down the stairs on his phone uh that was nice guy in front of the stonework and the guy on the stairs at the same time so what i'm doing is standing in this one space i've made three pictures here already in the last five or six minutes and i'm just seeing things i'm learning about the space the the opportunities to make a picture here look at this figure here she was good all in black with the hoodie against the pale stone work again very nice this guy is going to walk in front he was a nice shape yeah so these little shapes this little staircase is being quite fruitful for me i could easily have just walked past this had i not decided just to work in this space for for half an hour so i'm just back from a nice day out with my camera in the city and one of the things you saw me do today we started at the bank of england where i used some nice backgrounds there i composed them frame them up and i waited for people to walk in and out and i chose just the right moment to make a nice picture and then you saw me creating pictures i used the sculpture at one point and then the blue line on london bridge and waited for other elements to come into the picture to get two things that made a new dialogue together and then finally down at london bridge station i worked in one small area making several pictures all close together in the same few meters of pavement now it's your turn i have three tasks for you the first task is about composition and moment find a great background in a busy spot frame it nicely and then wait for people to enter the frame capturing them in the perfect place the second task is to practice curating a picture combine two or more unrelated elements in one frame that look the same echo each other or create a new meaning the third task is to focus your observation choose one place like a street corner an underground exit or a square and make three pictures in the same place we'd love to see your pictures and you can share them with us using the hashtag our city together and tagging visit the city on instagram i'll see you on the street

Channel: visitthecity

Views: 222,091

Keywords: London, City of London, Tourist Information, Tourist Information Centre, Visiting London, Things to do in London, Things to see in London, Attractions in London, Tourism, photography, street photography, urban photos

Id: CKz8hZe9kTo

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020