Search Results for: street photography

"Take another photo and I'm going to shove that camera up your a**." Beware of small guys with big mouths. That's the takeaway here.

Shooting street photography without a project in mind is like shopping for food when you’re hungry. You might get a few nice treats, but ultimately you get back and find there is nothing to sustain you.

On the surface, street photography may seem like a genre of disparate and random images based completely on chance. In reality, when done well, street photography can be turned into a cohesive art form that allows a photographer to show off a strong vision.

COOPH recently got together with London-based street photographer and co-founder of Street Photography Internationa Alan Schaller to talk about one of the most deceptively difficult forms of photography out there: black and white street photography.

I’m going to share with you 11 secrets that will help you up your night street photography game. These tips are based on what I teach paying customers on my London Soho Night Street Photography workshops, but don’t worry if you’re coming to one, I have many more secrets!

Before my recent trip to India, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts regarding the gear I wanted to take. My entire purpose for traveling was to make photographs, so I wanted to shape my kit into the most efficient setup possible.

It goes without saying that if you want to get better at something you have to practice. Simple, right? The thing is, that unlike more structured pursuits such as sports or music, the idea of practicing street photography seems a bit hard to wrap one’s head around.

Ah, the night, what a wonderful time to go out and do some street photography! As a photographer who got his start in the streets of Tokyo, it was inevitable that I would end up photographing mostly at night.

In this article, I'm going to share my basics of shooting from the hip, a fun way to get candid, up-close street photos. We’ll cover camera settings, what to look for, and other techniques along the way. Let’s get into it!

I’ve been shooting with the Ricoh GR III for the past few months and I can tell you it definitley lives up to the hype. It’s small, stealthy and produces amazing images but is this the ultimate street photography camera? My Ricoh GR III street photography review has the answer.

It can be very easy to arbitrarily limit oneself by genre; I think the effect this has on the mindset of a photographer can potentially really damage the quality of the work they look to produce.

I always wanted to shoot Japan during the winter when it was snowing, and earlier this year I got the chance when I headed to Sapporo—the biggest city in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. This city is seriously underrated for street photography.

First things first. For me, street photography is more than just taking candid photos. Street photography can also be asking strangers permission to photograph them or photographing empty streets. Whatever it is, the common nominator is that you go on the street and take photos of the “street life.” That’s how I see it.

Well-known portrait photographer and YouTuber Manny Ortiz recently gave himself a challenge. In an attempt to get out of a creative rut, he decided that he would try street photography for the first time. As those of you who regularly shoot in the street can probably predict, it didn't necessarily go so well.

One of the best parts of being an active member of the online photography community is the range of criticism I have access to when I share my work. Being open to constructive criticism is an essential part of growth as an artist -- not only can it highlight shortcomings, but it can also emphasize areas in which you may be strong without realizing it.

For many years, the only lens focal length I felt comfortable with when doing street photography was a 50mm.

At first glance, all we see is a dinky point-n-shoot camera; not much to it. It slips inside my front pocket, I mean, how powerful can it be? Well, photographers shouldn’t be fooled by its size and minimalism; like many of our subjects in the street. The Ricoh GR III is called a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” for a reason.

YouTuber Guy Jones created this 20-minute video that offers a brief history of street photography. It's a slideshow of 182 photos -- one photo for every year between 1838 and 2019.

As with any genre of photography, there is no "one size fits all" solution for exposure in any given situation. There are as many different means of achieving a "look" as there are photographers practicing those methods, and any can be adapted to fit into the kind of photography you want to be doing.

Street photography is one of the best ways to exercise and train your eye for application to photojournalism projects. I've written before about the way I apply the techniques and style from my street photography to my set stills and BTS as well as my long term fashion BTS project and I think that practicing some form of street photography every single day is an incredible way to keep your eye active and your mind constantly searching for new possibilities.

There is an observation about stand up comedians that once they reach a certain level of fame their material becomes less about "grounded" observations and criticisms and instead becoming more about airplane food and hotel rooms.

I recently shot this image while teaching a street photography workshop in London. I had been talking to my students about noticing things that were “odd” or out of place which normally makes for an engaging subject.

I started photography on perhaps the most popular focal length, 35mm, in the form of my RX1R, which I shot through my time at university. From there I moved to 50mm, which was a revolution to me in the way I saw and thought about my images. I now shoot the majority of my favorite images on a 90mm, which although not entirely unconventional is still far from the “standard.”

Like its predecessors, the Fuji X100 and Fuji XT, the Fuji GFX 50R is a marvel of engineering, ergonomics, size, image quality, and price.

I see a lot of articles across the Internet claiming to know the "rules to follow" or the "things to avoid" in street photography, easily one of the most hotly debated genres. What they tend to misunderstand is just how little the genre cares for photographic rules, and what the defining elements of street photography really are that go beyond any of the purely photographic elements.

Photographs are as much about what is not included as the subjects in the frame. Being aware of the things I avoid is as helpful to me as the things I gravitate towards when it comes to composing an image.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is “how do you make money from street photography?” So far, aside from print sales and teaching courses, the answer has been that I approach street photography as a form of “practice” -- a space in which I can experiment with new techniques, work on my style, and rehearse different fast-paced scenarios.

I've been using some version of "street" photography as practice and exercise for all areas of my photography since I started taking it seriously in 2015, but I've never been as focused and regimented about honing my approach to street photography every day as I have been since the start of 2018, when I decided to give myself an entire year to "make it" as a photographer.

I went on a photo walk the other day with a friend who mostly shoots events and does client-focused work. The majority of the time we just talked about freelance work, but every now and then we’d see an interesting scene and capture it. We both shot on zoom lenses, but when she would show me her captures, I couldn’t help but notice how zoomed in she was.

Kai Wong recently got together with street photographers Joshua K Jackson and Craig Whitehead (a.k.a. SixStreetUnder) to make this helpful 10.5-minute tips video containing 10 nuggets of wisdom for upping your street photography game.