Practical street photography tips you can apply to the streets when you shoot:
1. Look for hand gestures
When you see someone making an interesting hand gesture, start shooting photographs!
2. Shoot street photography anywhere
Use any opportunity to shoot street photography.
Street photography isn’t just on the public streets. You can shoot street photography indoors, and I believe in both “private” and public places.
3. Don’t hesitate
If you see a photograph you want to shoot,
Just shoot it.
Too often when we hesitate, we don’t shoot the photo.
Better to shoot before thinking.
Too often we overthink situations in street photography. Overcome this by starting to shoot before thinking about composition or anything.
This is my tip:
When you see a scene you’re interested in, just start shooting. Then while you start shooting, then start to adjust your composition and framing.
4. Shoot a lot, and select your photos afterwards
Better to take 100 photos of a scene, then when you go home you select your best photograph.
This is the biggest misunderstanding in photography and street photography, that you miraculously get a good photograph in just 1 shot.
The truth is, the master photographers would often “work the scene” and shoot many photos of the scene just to get 1 good one. And often, they would work scenes and take lots of photos of a certain scene, and get no good photos!
For more understanding, study contact sheets and debunk the myth of the “decisive moment”.
5. Zoom in
I’m generally not a fan of telephoto, but you can make lots of interesting photographs if you zoom with your phone.
Shoot more
Shoot more with your phone.
A lot of us are busy with our everyday lives, and for many of us, carrying our “real” cameras is too cumbersome.
Thus, experiment shooting more street photography on your phone, and see how you like it!
If you like night time street photography, I recommend Google Pixel 3; especially the Night Sight feature.
Read my full Google Pixel 3 camera review >
Shoot on,
ERIC
ERIC KIM STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS >