Arming yourself with one of the best cameras for street photography is only half the battle. Okay, pairing it with the best street photography lens is arguably the other half. But none of that will help you if you don't know what you're doing!
We recently fielded a question from a viewer on our Bokeh Face podcast, asking for some quick tips on street photography. My colleague Mike and I covered a whole bunch of tricks and techniques – but there's one hack in particular that solves a rookie mistake so many people make when starting out.
"Quite often the kind of public places that everyone goes to, they're the things that you might want to photograph from further away," said Mike.
"A good example is Big Ben. There's a famous shot of Big Ben and Westminster Bridge… there's an archway and it's a nice frame within a frame. You can frame up Big Ben with Westminster Bridge as a leading line receding towards it. That's your shot.
"But if you just went to Big Ben, which is what a lot of people with a camera will do, obviously it's not impossible, but you're unlikely to find that exciting shot. So make sure that you really work your area.
"If you want to photograph the Eiffel Tower, you're probably going to get more interesting, nicer shots of the Eiffel Tower if you're walking around Paris and you see it in the distance, or looming ahead over some nice Parisian buildings or whatever, than you are actually just standing directly under it."
My wife lived in Paris for a decade, so that example is one I've shot personally (even though I try to avoid photographing the Tower!).
"My favorite picture I've taken of the Eiffel Tower, not that it's a work of art – it was streets and streets away, almost overlooking a big hill. My picture of the Eiffel Tower is that small [I held up my thumb and forefinger to illustrate it being tiny in the frame], but there's half a dozen people leaning into this archway trying to take their picture.
"And that's where street photography tells the story. It's the narrative. Here's the landmark, but actually the interesting thing isn't the landmark that we've all seen a million times before; it's the people scrambling to get into frame and take their picture of it that tells a much more interesting story."
ABOVE: Watch us share our street photography tips
Mike concluded by sharing a piece of classic photography advice that's hard to credit (though is representative of Oliver Curtis' Volte-face work): "I can't remember if this is a quote from an actual photographer or if it's just something that gets bandied around: People are looking one way, the photographer turns around."
We shared plenty more advice, from chasing pockets of light to exploiting (and ignoring) compositional rules, how to use black-and-white and contrast (and when to ignore your histogram), choosing a focal length and focus method…
I've teed up our conversation in the video embedded above, so if give it a watch if you need some street photography pointers – or if you want to take issue with anything we've said!
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