This is how what I think about “Street Photography” as a practitioner:
It is unique
It is simple
It is challenging
Why Unique?
Street photography has no “real” rule. There is no strict limitation for what we can and can not do to create a street photo. For basic example, to create a portrait photography we must have a person inside image. To create a landscape photo we need a scenery to dominate our frame. While to create street photography, (almost) everything is up to us to decide.
– We can shoot street with/without people.
– We can shoot street literally everywhere. No rule where we can/can’t do to create street photo.
– We can shoot street with any type of compositions. No certain type of composition is better than the others. We only need to adapt which composition will work at best.
– We can shoot street with any cameras (and lens) on the market. Want to go wide? Just use 10mm lens. Want to use tele? Just use 135mm or longer lens. Everything works wonderfully as long as it suit our shooting style.
– We can shoot street with/without permission. Yes, personally, street portrait with permission is still a street photo.
– We can produce street photo that either contain deep story (but poor composition), or visually pleasing (with no deep story inside) or combination of both. None is better than the others.
Street photography is unique because we can blend so many elements, to produce an artistic image, based on human activities that happen everyday. Street photography helps us to free our mind from complicated basic rules. It gives us freedom. What matter the most is our creativity and our artistic taste to build an image.
Related article: Street photography is about freedom
Why Simple?
Due to “free” of rule, street photography becomes “the easiest” to do compare other genres. We can do it in the morning before go for work, or at lunch break time, or right after working hour. Be it at inside office building, or at shopping mall, or inside restaurant, inside traditional market, or simply on the city street. Anywhere and anytime, as long as there are artistic moments/scenes in front of us.
Related article:
Street photography at shopping mall
Bad place is not an excuse to not take photos
Shoot street in your working place
Simple to do, because we do not need any specific camera to start shoot street photography. Even our phone camera will able to do it! Of course an advance digital camera will produce better image quality, but what most important in street photography is the content quality. What moment/scene that happen inside our photo is way more important than image quality.
Related article:
How to choose camera for street photography
Why Challenging?
Because to produce a great street photo, we have to understand some important points:
– Know how to handle camera well (to control dial, button and menu).
– Able to think fast, to decide which composition will work the best at decisive moment.
– Dare to keep experiment new way of shooting.
– Can not fully control the scenes, subjects, and moments.
– Huge amount of patience, patience, and patience.
– Never give up mentality.
– Dare to fail, again and again. (I think my fail rate is above 90% to produce one great photo).
– Leaving comfort zone behind, because always shoot something in “spontaneous” moment.
Actually, the very first reason I still pretty excited with street photography is because it is not easy to do. It always challenges me. Can I create a better photo tomorrow? Do I already have great shooting style? Or should I change it? This question always “motivate” me to grab camera and start shooting everyday. Simply because I will never know when/where an artistic moment will happen right in front of my eyes.
Do not get me wrong, not because I shoot everyday then street photography does not scare me. There is always constant worries about what if I fail to get even a single good photo? What if my next subject will punch me on the face without saying anything first? What if someone try to grab my camera?
Luckily, by understand that there are some “worries” and “dangers” by doing street photography made me even more excited to do it. More like if I ride super fast roller coaster, I may worry what if there is an accident occur, but I still ride it anyway because a little dangerous risk will raise fun factor a lot!
That is all my thought about street photography. Keep shooting, be patient, experiment new things, and never forget to have fun!
Nico Harold
Very original, distinctive blog on Street Photography .Congrats .
Thank you very much for kind words Nezahat, I really appreciate it 🙂
That’s very kind of you. Thank you so much 🙂