Street Photography Tips

 By: Megat Harris Iskandar

DON’T BE A PERFECTIONIST
Perfection is not required in street photography. I know getting a sharp images pleases everyone. However, we can’t always get a perfectly focused images as it does not turned out as what we want. Thus, sharpness is not everything, so break the rules! Get familiar and comfortable in knowing your gear. In case you missed the focus on your initial subject or mistakenly focuses on something else, you can always fix the image in post-editing by cropping and recompose it properly. It is a mistake, but it is a mistake that can be fix and turn into something else. Easy, don’t sweat yourself so much on becoming a perfectionist.

SHOOT IN ALL WEATHER

Of course it’s always nice to shoot on a sunny and warm weather because of the strong lights and hard shadows that complement your great photos. But that is so repetitive and it will get boring after a while when you only get the same type of shots. To get a completely different kind of shots you need to go shoot in all weather – raining, cold, fog, intense summer or even snow– which will help you rediscover a new or different way of shooting the same place that you have shot all the time. All those natural changes in weather gives you diversity that will avoid you from getting bored of shooting the same thing over and over again.

SEE DON’T CAPTURE!

In street photography, it is all about the expression of the world. It is how we see the world, how we perceive it, and how we express it to other people. Try to spend more time on observing the surroundings – scene of the daily life or works. Try to find what is interesting to your eyes and what stories do you want to share to your viewer. Before you start capturing you need to be able to have that vision. Whether you’re practicing with a camera or without a camera, you can always practice to visualise what surrounds you, what feels very interesting, what could make a very compelling stories for your eyes that you want to share to the rest of the world. Practice on observing and seeing before you ever get to click that shutter button! 

PRIME LENSES > ZOOM LENSES

Shooting with prime lenses just give you a better experience and get you to think differently about most of your shots due to the fixed focal length. It forces you to focus more on the composition which means you are going to move around more often to get the subject into the proper composition. Despite of the tiredness, this can be advantageous for you because you might get a unique story as you move around and have more interactions with your subject. The most important thing about prime lenses is that it gives you a wider aperture at a cheaper price and also let you shoot more discretely. We can all agree that being discrete or stealth when you are out on the street is a great advantage when we are trying to get a shots of – people, emotions, scene – because you don’t want to scare everyone with a giant zoom lenses and ended up not getting the shot or worsts, getting told off. Its efficient, budget wise, and dope shots! 

FORGET ABOUT SETTINGS!

First thing that you need to keep in mind while doing street photography is to focus more on what you are trying to capture and the story that you are trying to portray. Don’t spend too much time thinking about the settings of your camera or how you are going to capture them. Why? This is simply because while you are busy dialling all the perfect settings you might missed the perfect shot and action that you have had in your mind. Especially when it involves a moving subject – cars, bicycle, pedestrians, trams – you would have missed the shot hundred percent of the time if had to change your manual settings or tweak everything in your camera. This is when Aperture Priority Mode plays it roles. This mode basically let you set your aperture to control the depth of field so you can nail the focus and blur of the subject in the image. Super easy mode when you get the hang of it.