street

Photos of Giant Billboard People Looming Over Pedestrians in New York City

When Israeli photographer Natan Dvir visited New York City in 2008, he was taken aback by the massive advertising billboards dominating commercial hubs and the fact that giant models on them loomed over the pedestrians walking by. Dvir began documenting these billboards and the juxtaposition of huge fake humans and tiny real humans through his project titled "Coming Soon."

‘Can I Take Your Picture?’: How to Talk to Strangers Without Upsetting Your Mother

Photographing strangers can be a daunting proposition. It was one of the focuses of the workshops I held in NYC this past summer. What if they get mad, what if they yell at me, or what if they go completely psycho on me? Odds are, most people will simply say no pictures. Even the school of Bruce Gilden photographers have hardly been bothered with their “mugging style portrait.”

Could Google Glass Work as a Tool For Street Photography?

Google Glass has received a lot of criticism, particularly when it comes to privacy. Given the fact you can record video and take photos without people noticing, some could call it an opportunity for taking photos without permission. Now, in my spare time, I take photos with a particular interest in is Street Photography. Candid street photography is taking photos of any stranger without permission. Why is there this controversy over Glass when candid photography without permission is a growing genre of photography? That is my question.

People-Watching Photos of Commuters on the Staten Island Ferry

School of Visual Arts photography student Michael Schmidt has been working on a series that documents the commuters who ride the Staten Island Ferry that shuttles people between Staten Island and Manhattan. It's an environment in which people are mostly stationary and often lost in their thoughts or absorbed in the things being displayed on their smartphones.

Street: A Mesmerizing Slow-Motion Drive Down the Streets of NYC

Combining the capabilities of a high-speed camera with the basic idea that "there are enough [magical moments] happening every moment of any given day," New York artist James Nares is currently captivating audiences at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mesmerizing video "Street."

Simultaneous Street Photography From Two Different Points of View

Dutch photographers Thijs groot Wassink and Ruben Lundgren live in London and Beijing, and work together on photo projects as a duo known as WassinkLundgren. One of their collaborations is a set of street photographs shot on the sidewalks of Tokyo, Japan in 2009 and 2010. Titled Tokyo Tokyo, each of the pieces is a diptych showing the same "decisive moment" shot by both photographers at the same moment in time, and then arranged side by side.

Portraits of People Photographed by Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist

Since its inception in 2005, street fashion photography blog The Sartorialist has become something of a bellwether in the fashion industry, turning photographer Scott Schuman into a kingmaker that can give ordinary fashionable folk 15 minutes of intense Internet fame by spotting them, shooting their photo, and publishing it to his blog.

Schuman recently hosted a party attended by many of the subjects seen in his posed street portraits. He took the opportunity to produce this beautiful short video that captures a followup-up portrait of a number of them.

On Traveling to Iran as an American Street Photographer

Photographer Brandon Stanton has generated quite a bit of attention in the photo world through his project Humans of New York, which features thousands of portraits that form a visual census of the city. His goal is to capture 10,000 portraits of New Yorkers that are associated with points on a map.

Stanton recently visited the country of Iran to shoot similar portraits of its inhabitants. He tells us that by visiting the country as a tourist rather than a press member, he was able to get a "remarkable amount of access" in order to create a beautiful collection of intimate street portraits.

The Ethics of Photographing Random Strangers on the Street

Street photography is a genre that every photographer will try at least once in his or her career. Its broad appeal stems from the fact that you can do it anywhere; there’s a human element to the images that captivate the viewer, and if done well, can make for some extremely arresting images.

However, it also requires balls. You have to get close enough to your subjects; and with people, invading personal space is uncomfortable (and possibly hazardous to health) for both photographer and subject.

Shooting Studio Portraits of Strangers on the Street As If They Were Famous

Philippe Echaroux is a young French photographer who makes a living shooting portraits of celebrities (among other things). Recently, he carried out a personal project that had been brewing in his mind for some time: using his celebrity portraiture experience and style for spontaneous portraits of ordinary strangers encountered on the street. The short video above shows how Echaroux roamed around with his small team and set up makeshift photo studios for each of the portraits.

In Defense of Telephoto Lenses for Street Photography

What is street photography? The question is controversial, that's for sure. The first problem arises when trying to define it. According to Wikipedia:

Street photography is a type of photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings.

This seems to be something everyone can agree on... but it's incomplete; it's ambiguous. What, then, makes street photography different from simple candid photography or voyeurism?

The Over-Saturated World of Fashion Street Photography

Scott Schuman, or The Sartorialist, made it big in the blogging, photography, and fashion worlds by having his fashion street photography blog become an Internet sensation. If you think he's unique in his subject matter, however, boy are you mistaken: he's simply one of the most famous.

New York Magazine created this fascinating look at how the world of street fashion photography is now teeming with photographers.

Edwardian Sartorialist: Street Fashion Photos from a Century Ago

The Sartorialist might be a big name in street fashion photography these days, but snapping impromptu photos of the latest clothing trends is nothing new. Over a century ago, a photographer named Edward Linley Sambourne did the same kind of photography on the streets of London and Paris using a concealed camera. His images form a beautiful historical record of what people wore that deviates from what people typically think of when they hear "Edwardian fashion".

Documenting the Human Condition: A Documentary on Street Photography

Here's an oldie but goodie: back in September 2009, photographer Chris Weeks released this documentary about street photography titled Documenting the Human Condition. It's occasionally preachy and at times feels like a stealthy Leica advertisement, but should be interesting to you if you're at all interested in the practice of street photography.

Street Art that Points Old School Cameras at Passers-By

Street artists Jana & JS visit cities across Europe and paint portraits of themselves (and sometimes others) shooting with various film cameras. Each piece first starts out as a photograph, which is then turned into a stencil that's used to put up the painting.

Street Photographs of People Texting

For his project titled "Texters", photographer Joe Holmes captured unsuspecting people lost in their own worlds while texting on their phones. If you want to photograph strangers on the street without getting noticed, this seems like a good way of doing so...

Candid Portraits of People Peering at Their Own Reflections

If you think the expression on these people's faces don't look like ordinary street portraits, it's because they're actually looking at themselves in a mirror. Moa Karlberg captured these unique candid portraits of strangers by using a one-way mirror, capturing what it looks like when people look at reflections of themselves.

Lessons from Street Photography

Editor’s note: When I first came across the following post by Jessyel Ty Gonzalez of …