Dear streettogs, you might have read it in my last update post from Paris, but I am excited to release my newest free (and “open source“) e-book: “The Street Photography Composition Manual.” The book is a distillation of all the lessons I have learned about composition and street photography, and I put it into a…
I’m on a train to Aix en Provence, to the south of France and wanted to share my experiences shooting street photography in Paris. If you read on the internet, apparently there are more strict regulations about image copyright and street photography in France. To my understanding, you can take a photograph of anybody in…
I am excited to share this new presentation I just put together on the theory of composition in street photography, drawing from the wisdom of Henri Cartier-Bresson. You can see the entire presentation below: Slideshare Download PDF Learn more about composition >
In this video presentation I share compositional techniques to make better street photographs (diagonals, figure-to-ground, curves, leading lines, framing). You can see all the slides for this presentation here. Articles on Street Photography Composition If you want to learn how to improve your compositions in street photography, enjoy these articles: Composition Lesson #1: Triangles Composition…
You can see all my composition lessons here. I have been quite fascinated with the square-format in street photography for a while. My fascination first came about from Jeroen Helmink, a photographer from the Netherlands (you can see a fun video we made on shooting Hasseblads). There was something quite sexy about the 6×6 format–…
Hey streettogs, thanks for staying tuned in for the “Saigon Diary” series. For the sake of getting sleep and having higher quality posts, I’ve decided not to keep a daily diary– but to update every 2-3 days (depending on how interesting my days are). Some people are asking me why I’m showing bad photos in…
Above is the presentation I used as an introduction to composition in street photography. Feel free to use, edit, and distribute the presentation on Slideshare here. Learn more about composition in street photography via the lessons below: Composition Lesson #1: Triangles Composition Lesson #2: Figure-to-ground Composition Lesson #3: Diagonals Composition Lesson #4: Leading Lines Composition…
I think one of the most difficult compositional techniques in street photography is to incorporate multiple subjects in the frame — without it becoming too cluttered or overwhelming. Generally the problem is that most photographers that try to incorporate multiple subjects have some of the following problems: Overlapping subjects Distracting backgrounds No central subject Not…
For today’s compositional lesson– I want to talk about color theory— and how you can better utilize colors when it comes to your street photography. Personally around 2 years ago, I made the switch from shooting fully black and white — to just shooting color film (Kodak Portra 400). Since then, I have learned to…
For today’s lesson I want to talk about “urban landscapes.” Urban landscapes aren’t really compositions in the specific sense (compared to lines, curves, etc)– but I still feel they are relevant when creating our street photographs. If you guys have read my prior lessons on composition– I have thought a lot about what a “composition”…
All photos in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. For today’s compositional lesson– I want to talk about curves. To start off, why curves? Well– curves are some of the most dynamic lines that exist.
All photographs in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. For today’s compositional lesson I want to talk about perspective. Google defines “perspective” as the following: The art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each…
All photos included in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. For today’s street photography lesson, I want to talk about framing. Framing itself is a pretty basic compositional technique, something I am sure we all learned when we first started. But let us delve deeper into framing. Let us see examples from the…
All of the photos in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. For today’s composition lesson I want to focus on a compositional technique that is more utilized by intermediate/advanced photographers. It is the idea of depth. What exactly is “depth” anyways? Well, the Merrian-Webster dictionary provides this definition (which we generally think of…
All photos in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. For today’s street photography composition lesson– I would like to discuss leading lines. Leading lines are one of the most basic photography compositional techniques– I am sure you have all heard of it before. But it is a technique that we often don’t listen…
For today’s street photography composition lesson, we will discuss a compositional rule that is simple enough: the diagonal. Credit goes to Adam Marelli for teaching me about this important design element which can help street photographers all around the globe. Diagonals are one of the strongest and most fundamental compositional elements– something that we all…
All photos in this article are copyrighted by their respective photographers. To continue my street photography composition lessons, I want to now move onto the topic of “figure-to-ground”. What I learned from Adam Marelli is that one of the most important things in a photo is if it “reads” well. Meaning– if you look at…
All photos in this article copyrighted by their respective photographers. One of the things I don’t talk much about is composition on my blog when it comes to street photography. To be quite honest, I am not as interested in composition of photographers when it comes to their philosophies when it comes to photography. However…
Adam Marelli, a talented photographer and artist that I have taught two workshops with recently gave a superb lecture at the B&H Photo space in NYC on design/composition. The talk is about an hour and a half, and worth every minute. I highly recommend every street photographer who wants to better understand how to compose…
Join Eric Kim and Adam Marelli… Street Photography Workshop: Introduction to Design/Composition Calcutta [INDIA] – December 10th-14th Eric’s Note: I am excited to announce that I will be teaching another unique 5-day workshop in Calcutta, India with NYC photographer and master composition teacher Adam Marelli. Adam Marelli has a keen eye for design, composition, and capturing “the…