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.

Street Portraiture POV in Chicago with the Samsung NX20

For the Samsung NX20 “Shoot Wow” live street photography campaign, I roamed the streets of Chicago and focused on street portraiture. Why street portraiture? Because getting 2 good candid shots every hour is near impossible, and street portraiture is something I have always been quite comfortable with and enjoyed. It also gave me a good opportunity to interact more with the people on the streets – something that I lose when just shooting street photography candidly.

This is some footage from the event – a small portion of it. I have over 16 hours of footage in all (still editing and going through it). I will try to put out a series of these videos over the next few weeks.

Hope you guys enjoy!