Thoughts and reflections on Street Photography

I like doing street photography - a lot. It is a kind of photography that a person can do very easily and at any hour of the day or night - and you can do it 24/7/365. All you have to do is go to the nearest town and there is your shooting environment.

There is no need to spend a ton of money flying to some far away destination; you can find street photography subject matter in your home town. Accessibility of your subject matter, along with the frequent, consistent making of images will help you advance as a photographer in terms of learning photographic skills and in terms of honing your photographic eye and style.

Street photography is one of the hardest kinds of photography to do well - it takes a good amount of practice. You must learn to anticipate the decisive moment and be able to see what is about to happen in a street scene before it happens. It is a challenge, but rising to the challenge will bring your photography a windfall of unexpected benefits.

That is what makes street photography a great pursuit: Anytime you shoot photos with people in them, there will be a fair amount of overlap between your street photography skill set and the skills required to make top quality images in documentary, editorial, reportage, event, travel and wedding photography. Any time you photograph people, your images will be at a higher level if you engage in street photography on a regular basis.

It can be stressful to go out and photograph strangers, but if you can discipline yourself to feel the fear and do it anyway, the fear will quickly evaporate. Even after 12+ years of doing street photography, I sometimes still get a case of nerves when going out to shoot on the street. The solution? I simply refuse to let fear stop me. After I shoot for a few minutes, the fear fades away and I am in the right mindset for doing street photography.

Sometimes people won’t want to be photographed, and that’s okay. Just nod in agreement, smile and move on. Yes, I have been complained at by people when I am doing street photography - but that happens very rarely.

One way to minimize verbal confrontations is to learn to be as unobtrusive as possible; learn to operate in stealth mode. The less you are seen by your subjects, the better your street photographs will be. The intention of street photography is to capture the unguarded moment, when your subject is being himself or herself - to be the unobserved observer who neither influences or intervenes. “A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye - these we should all have,” said Henri Cartier-Bresson, the master of both who is without equal as a connoisseur of the decisive moment.

I would estimate that for every one day that someone has complained at me for making a photo of them on the street, I have gone out and shot easily 250 days where no one complained. Being complained at once for every 250 days of street photography is a very small price to pay for the benefits that street photography will bring to your photographic endeavors. As for being yelled at, that is even more rare. In over twelve years of doing street photography, I have been yelled at or verbally harassed less than five times total.

Doing street photography in the U.S. is really not that big of a deal - everybody photographs everybody all the time these days. If you will be traveling internationally, it can be different.

Do your research before you go to another culture or nation to do street photography so you will know what to expect. People in some cultures welcome being photographed; people in other cultures can be resistant to being photographed by outsiders.

Do your due diligence before you travel so that you will know what the locals expect - and by all means, honor their wishes and their cultural norms.