Street

let’s get back to the lesson plan. keep in mind these are purely built out of my own experience and interpretation of the art of photography. there is probably a lot missing. but at least i can give you a starting point.

outside of selfies, street photography is probably the most prevalent genre of photography today. it is accessible, and thanks to increasingly capable smartphone and consumer cameras, just about anyone can do it.

there are a lot of different approaches to street, but i’ll break it down into two central categories.

first, there is the purely incidental. you’re at the night market, the old couple is cooking and the only light is a neon sign, the cook fire and an old crt television. smoke is rising off of the stir fry in the pan, and diffusing the light. the old man is watching the tv with his hand on his hip. he is shiny with sweat and cooking oil. the old woman is standing with arm hands clasped behind her back, leaning forward on her feet and looking down the street with a determined and hopeful look on her face, hoping to see their next customer. snap.

the second type of street photography is a little more about the scene itself. you find a composition that is compelling. it’s mid-afternoon and the shadows are long but still harsh. you set up in an archway and wait for a passerby to cross the span of the arch. a businessman with a briefcase and a long coat pushes against the wind into your frame, giving his frenetic pace and posture perfectly counterbalancing the stillness and stoicism of your composition. the long shadows give a sense that the day is waning, and this man’s movements complete that statement so you let the shutter speed stay open just a hair longer than necessary. snap.

there is obviously a lot more to street photography, but these two approaches are a great starting point. they force you to work on your fundamentals while also being adaptable. to take the completely random and bring it to order. each of the two scenes i described above are lost in the chaos of the urban environment, passed by without a second thought thousands of times per day. it would be easy to miss them. to walk by and say that there is nothing interesting worth shooting. so i guess the challenge of street is to look at the world not as you see it, but as it could be seen if it was frozen in amber, locked into stasis.