fear

Ignore the Barking of Dogs

Dear friend,

I wanted to give you some advice on bouncing back from negative and debilitating experiences when you’re shooting street photography.

How To Get People to Say Yes When Shooting Street Portraits

In my street photography workshops, I often give the students a “5 yes/5 no” assignment. The concept is simple: you approach a bunch of strangers and ask permission to take their portrait. You intentionally try to get 5 people to say “yes”, and 5 people to say “no.”

Sometimes students struggle to get all 5 people to say “yes”, and sometimes students have no problem.

So what are some good strategies to quickly develop a rapport with strangers, and have strangers to say “yes” to having their picture taken?

Presentation: Tips, Techniques, and Assignments to Conquer Your Fear of Street Photography

Hey streettogs, I just uploaded some slides for a free talk I did for Chase Toronto the other day on tips, techniques, and tricks to conquer your fear of shooting street photography.

You can also download the slides for free here. Enjoy! :)

The Golden Rule in Street Photography: Photograph Others How You Would Like to Be Photographed

One thing I notice when I’m teaching street photography workshops is that a lot of photographers don’t like having their own photograph taken.

This is a huge problem.

If you want to build up your confidence in shooting street photography, I think you also need to be comfortable being on the other side of the camera.

Video Lecture: How to Be Invisible When Shooting Street Photography

In this video lecture above, I share some practical tips, thoughts, and philosophies about being “invisible when shooting street photography. You can check out the slides here.

If you want to learn how to overcome your fear of shooting street photography, I also recommend watching my video lecture: “How to Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography” and/or join me at one of my upcoming street photography workshops!

How to Overcome Your Fear in Street Photography with “Rejection Exposure Therapy”

This morning on the way to the gym, I was listening to the newest podcast episode of “Invisibilia” (a new NPR podcast on cognitive and behavioral science) and they had an episode titled “Fearless”.

The episode was fascinating to me— as I have always been obsessive with this idea of conquering your fear of shooting street photography.

I notice that out of all the workshops I teach, my introductory “Conquer Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography” course is always (by far) the most popular.

Video Lecture: How to Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography

In an effort to be more helpful, I am going to start putting together more video lectures and features for YouTube. In this presentation, I give some practical advice how to overcome your fears of shooting street photography– including the philosophy, approach, and tips.

Articles on Conquering Your Fear

Check out my Free Ebook: “31 Days to Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography“

My recent article: “How to Harness Your Fear to Become a More Confident Street Photographer”

Slides

You can see the slides on Slideshare here.

Listen to the Audio

If you want to build up your confidence in shooting street photography, you can also join me at one of my upcoming street photography workshops.

How to Harness Your Fear to Become a More Confident Street Photographer

Street photography is one of the most difficult forms of photography out there. Not only do you have to rapidly compose, frame, and approach strangers— but you have to do so with the risk of “injury.” They might injure you verbally (threaten to break your camera, give you a dirty look and call you a creep, or curse at you) or they might injure you physically (try to grab your camera, hit you, shove you, etc).

Streettogs Academy Assignment No. 5 “Fear” Results and Analysis

Our assignment no. 5 themed “Fear” came at an excellent timing. The Halloween period was ripe with opportunities on how to show our theme and it manifested well with the entries for this assignment. Excellent choice for an assignment from Assignment No. 4 winner, Florin Ghebosu.

I put a twist on how I present the selections for this assignment by identifying what type of fear is being shown or manifested on the images selected which may or may not be correct but hey my mistakes shouldn’t take away from the good images for this assignment. I think it would be fun so let’s check it out!

How to Approach Strangers on the Street: Brandon Stanton from Humans of New York Shares His Technique

Brandon Stanton from Humans of New York shares some insightful tips on how to approach strangers on the street. If you’ve ever been nervous approaching strangers, this will be a great watch for you!

If you want to learn more how to overcome your fear of shooting street photography, you can download my free e-book: “31 Days to Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography“and also read my articles below:

3 Tips To Conquer Your Fear of Shooting Street Portraits

Last November I shot a campaign for Samsung’s NX20 camera using a video camera strapped to my head to record the footage of me shooting street portraits in Chicago with permission. It was a project that was intensive: I shot for 2 days straight from 5am-noon on little sleep.

The thing I loved most about the project is that although I certainly didn’t take photos that made it into my portfolio — it forced me to step outside of my comfort zone and interact with lots of people on the streets in a short period of time. The fact that the video was being played live in Amsterdam while I was shooting did give me healthy pressure which ended up being a great learning experience.

5 Tips How To Overcome Your Fear of Shooting in Public

One of the questions that I am asked quite often is, “How did you get over your fear of shooting in public?” To answer that question, I got over it by simply going out and constantly shooting in public. However it definitely does take a lot of practice and effort to build up that courage of shooting in the streets without feeling like a “creeper” or out-of-place.

For those of you who may not know, I recently graduated UCLA with a B.A. in Sociology. Therefore when it comes to photography, a lot of my sociological thoughts get intertwined as well. In many introduction sociology classes, teachers often assign students “breaching experiments,” which involve doing things which violate certain “social norms” which may make you and others feel uncomfortable. However I have found that by realizing that these social norms which govern everyday life are not concrete and can be bent to our whim, I quickly got over my fear of shooting in public.

"A Lone Dinner" - Los Angeles 2009 - Eric Kim

Therefore these are some sociology breaching experiments that I have put together which could help you first get over your fear of looking “strange” or “awkward” in breaking social norms (such as taking photos of strangers in public). Although these may seem quite easy on the surface, doing them in practice is actually quite difficult. I have been making it a point to practice these breaching experiments as often as I could, and I can admit that I still have a long way to go until I could have enough courage like street photographer Bruce Gilden, who is famous of taking really up close and personal images of people. [YouTube].

5 Sociology Breaching Experiments:

Make eye contact with strangers and do not look away. If they stare back, smile and see how they respond.
When entering an elevator, turn the opposite way, even when everyone is facing the “right” way.
When walking down a busy street, suddenly put your things aside and lie on the ground for five seconds. Then stand up and walk away.
Smile and wave at a random stranger. See how they react.
Now take out your camera and take a photo of a random stranger. Observe what happens.

Help get the word out there and share this list with your fellow photographer friends! Post it to Facebook, your blog, or even tweet it!