Street photography is about how we perceive this world through our eyes and mind everyday. It is an action of hunting beauty, artistic and unique moments, then judge them whether it is good or not based on our own taste, feeling, and preference.
In street photography many things decided by our judgement and our vision, such as definition, action, and rule (of street photography). Yes, it is true there are still some rules that limiting street photography, but these things are so general that we still have plenty of other option/style to do shoot on the street. This particular reason make me realise that in street photography, it is very subjective and full of freedom. These “freedom” style consist of:
Composition
Be it rule of third, rule of odds, symmetry, asymmetry, framing, leading lines, juxtaposition, Fibonacci spiral, etc. Do not judge our own photos by the quality of composition, but how these photos make us feel. A great street photograph should prioritise how strong it creates a sense of feeling inside our heart and mind, instead of the discipline of the composition itself. A good composition can lead a better sense or story from photograph, though not always happen all the time. Let our own gut decide it.
Camera Quality
Of course high end Mirrorless or DSLR camera will result more pleasing to audience’s eyes, but let not this reason stop us shoot on the street. Because the main point in street photography is the content itself. This is a photography genre when smartphone can “defeat” Leica or any other high end cameras. Content here is about the meaning, uniqueness, and artistic of components or moments that happen inside our photograph. Do not think to not shooting street just because we do not own high end cameras. Another prove of this statement is many (famous) street photographers out there love to add grain effect to their photos to create a stronger feel (gritty), even though they use high end cameras which has clean noise at high ISO.
Camera Lenses (Angle of View)
Do not feel constraint to not shoot street because we do not have lens that typically other people use for street photography. Get lens that we most comfortable to use with, the one who can become our inspiration to start/keep shooting street. Be it 35mm or 50mm (typical street lens nowadays), or any other lenses that we think can help us get more inspiration and creative shoots (mine is 85mm). Do not let other people dictate us which lens we “should” use and “should not” use. No lens is better than the others, they are just different. Suit our lenses with our style of shooting, our vision, and what we want to achieve in street photography.
Shoot Anywhere
“I do not have time to go outside and taking photograph of people on the street”. Well, we can start shoot street from everywhere as long as it is in public places. Start from area that we pass everyday, around our living place, or at working place, or maybe when we go to shopping mall. It is just literally anywhere you want.
Read more about shoot anywhere at Shooting street is not always on the street and Bad place is not an excuse to not take photos.
Shoot Anytime
Do not think that if we full busy at daylight time then we can not shot street at all. Try to start shoot at night time (read here), or try to shoot scenes at your weekend/holiday time. Truth to be told, there is always time to shoot street, let’s say we can spare 15-20 minutes from our lunch time to focus on search unique things or moments everyday, that would be better than shoot nothing at all. Some great scenes come at the least predicted time, in photo above I took the shot after I watched cinema, late night inside mall, who will guess there is an unique moment lying around, when we hardly see any people or activities there (all stores closed at 10pm).
From Documentary to Visual Art
It does not matter whether we want to present strong story about humanity, or just create visual art or optical illusion from street scenes. Let our mind and preference decide it for us. Create our artistic photos based on our feeling as an artist.
With or Without Permission
Some said that street photography should be 100% full of candid moment only. I disagree. Personally, shoot street with excuse from subject is still part of street photography. It is true that by asking them to be photographed, they realise our camera existence, but it is still very different compare to “normal” portrait photography when we staged everything to achieve a perfect shoot. There are still many elements that we can not control by doing street portrait (even though with permission) such as:
- We can not control what they wear and how they “make up” their appearance
- We can not control the light (unless we want to use a little integrated flash in camera)
- We can not control their mood
- We can not control how they will react, let’s say we told them to “do not smile on camera”, they can give us 100 other types of facial expressions.
- We can not even control whether they will allow us to be photographed or not
So, if we start to shoot on the street by bringing multiple flash (or even continuous light lamp), setting them at the place we want, having our own accessory (red umbrella or yellow jacket) to put on, and we paid strangers to pose, then told them exactly how to react in front of camera, we can call this is a concept portrait with strangers, not street anymore.
With or Without People
Street photography is about documenting humanity. Documenting humanity is about documenting people or anything that has strong relationship to human. It is not specifically should has people inside photo. So, even if we think we too shy or too afraid or just simply dislike photograph stranger on the street, does not mean we can not shoot street photography.
That is all about my thought of the freedom shoot street photography. We can get more creative and unique because there are so many option how to shoot on the street, it simply almost know no boundaries. Have fun shooting out there, just remember to do not for force you beliefs about street photography into others, other people may see things in different way, and it is a good thing. As bonus, here is a photograph of beautiful street cat that I met recently (yesterday to be exact), because I just realise that I have a ton of street cat photos in my album!
Keep shooting and stay inspired,
Nico Harold