When someone asked me “Hey Nico, actually what is one ultimate tips to do street photography?” My short answer would be: Have your camera with you everyday!
It may sounds too easy and simple, but truth to be told, I can not think any better tips than that. By have our camera with us everyday we can get some useful advantages:
Shoot more and more
Clearly the most obvious reason. Attach a neck strap/wrist strap or use a small bag that easy for us to reach our camera anytime. This way we will eliminate most “laziness” to not to take shots. As we know “Luck” is part of street photography, the more we shoot the bigger chance we get great result.
Train our eye and instinct
The more we shoot, the more we practise our senses to detect meaningful moments. This is also a primary reason why some great street photographers out there always encourage people to bring camera every day, because they want to keep their instinct sharp and able to work the scene anytime.
Camera setting
Using camera is like practising how to ride bicycle. The more frequent we practise, the more we can do it in better way. If any of you ever confuse how to use full manual or semi auto setting (like aperture priority, shutter speed priority, ISO priority) then use your camera every day. There is a (big) chance you may feel auto setting will restrict your shooting style in one or the other way. If you a person who always use auto setting, It is also a good way to learn triangle exposure quickly rather than try to memorise what the function each of them.
I am not saying that we should use full manual mode to shoot street, but rather we need to know exactly how our camera works, therefore we can use it to shoot in more creative style. My preference setting for now is aperture priority (ISO and shutter speed at auto setting).
Tips: Try to shoot the whole week with aperture priority only. Then the next week try to do it with ISO or shutter speed priority only. Try them one by one to understand each function before use full manual mode. If we jump from full auto to full manual right away, it could be cost us a lot of time to setting camera before take shots, which is bad to catch decisive moment.
See the world differently (in a good way)
When we go outside and realise that our weapon (camera) is in our hand, we automatically will keep seek any interesting object to photograph. As I wrote before that street photography can bring us more happiness (read here):
As street photographer we see the world in different ways compare to normal person. We pay (much) more attention to our surrounding, then use our instinct, gut and imagination to create an artistic scene from elements/moments that available in public spaces every day.
Imagine if we are tourists who visit New York City for the first time with our camera, we will start to snap many things there. Be a tourist in our own city and start to photograph things that attract us! Do not think too much whether that photos will become an award winning photograph or just become ordinary snap shots, shoot first (with our gut and feeling), then decide later whether we want to keep it or not. Always better to delete bad photos rather than miss great moment.
Beautiful things around us
Related to previous point, I believe beautiful moments / objects happen around us every day, it is just up to us whether we want to seek for it or not. In photo above, I took it at midnight when I was shopping in 24hr grocery store near my living place. Light source from an advertising board created a beautiful colour that I simply could not ignore. Notice that I even have my camera with me when go to grocery store at midnight. I just think that I feel “safer” when my camera with me. I treat my camera like I treat my wrist watch, I feel a bit uncomfortable if I go outside without it.
Memory recorder
Not strongly related to street photography, but actually even more important than that. Camera is a tool to capture moment and freeze time. My experience taught me that we will never know who we will meet today. Be it your long lost friend, or perhaps your friend’s new baby born. We can just meet them coincidentally anywhere (on the street, at cafe shop, shopping mall, etc). By have our camera with us we can memorise this moment better than what our smartphone can do! If you never had real camera before, let me tell you that most of modern cameras nowadays have WiFi feature, which is very simple to connect camera to our smartphone and do immediate sharing to your Facebook or Instagram.
Extra tips:
Choose camera that we feel comfortable with (read here). The one that make us feel excited to always take shots more and more. Always remember that the way we feel about our camera is more important than image quality itself. It is useless to have camera with the best image quality if we do not even want to take it outside.
All photos in this post taken when I am outside with my camera but without any special intention to hunting for moments. I just walked casually and snap things that attract my eyes (and my feeling). In photo above I snapped it when I was about getting my lunch at my workplace area.
That is all for my thought about bring your camera everyday. Start to use your camera like your extension of arm (and eye), have fun with hidden beautiful moments/things out there!
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold