Seven MUST KNOW street photography TIPS from two pro photographers

foreign [Music] you can't really improve your street photography unless you get out onto the streets and start taking photographs everything else that we're going to discuss in this video from this point onwards basically revolves around this one simple concept the more time that you spend on the street the more you open yourself up to different situations and the chance of getting good photographs also it's a great way of gaining confidence you put the hours in you put the miles in you come across people you haven't met before you start shooting strangers everything becomes less scary

you're overcoming hurdles all the time street photography is one of those genres where if you are prolific at it you will get better and better as a photographer so the most important thing you can do is get a good pair of shoes and I mean that physically and of course metaphorically [Music] now I've discussed at length lens choice and which is the right lens for you as a photographer in another video and I'll link to that in the comments below and also at the end of this video all I wanted to add is that if

you just go out on the street with just one lens and one camera body you take away any indecision I know this from experience as a photographer that grew up shooting weddings one of the things that I had to do is take a lot of gear with me a lot of lenses a lot of cameras the main reason being that variety was absolutely imperative and a short amount of time to take pictures and I had to get as much variety as possible so the easiest way of getting variety was to take lots of lenses when

I started to take Street seriously this became quite a big problem I started out going down the street with a big bag of lenses I couldn't decide which lenses to use and whereas something like a wedding or an event or even something like if you're shooting sports like a football match or a basketball match or whatever you're doing you pretty much know what's going to happen at a certain time with street it's completely random you never know what's going to be around the next corner I just ended up confusing myself I ended up being in

a whole world of frustration and indecision so the only way around that for me was to get rid of everything apart from One camera body and one lens I took away the indecision and I became a much better Street photographer now the other thing as well if you use one camera on one lens you get very used to using it you get to know what it's going to do you get to know what your focal length is going to do you get to know the distances you want to be able to work at and the

whole mechanical aspect of shooting street photography becomes very fluid you don't think so much about the camera you just literally think about the photograph that's in front of you now those of you that follow the channel will know that both myself and Sarah shoot with very old camera systems but we're reluctant to change because we're so used to them foreign for those of you that aren't familiar with the term chimping it kind of started when digital photography first came in photographers had this amazing thing on the back of the camera called the LCD now you've

got to remember that before digital it wasn't until you got your pictures back that you knew what you got or what you hadn't got so when the LCD came in and photographers were able to look at the back of the camera and see their pictures literally as they were taking them there was this notion that photographers would start to make noises like chimpanzees so they look at the back of the camera and started to make exciting noises like chimpanzees and that's where the term chimping came from looking back at the camera or chimping is a

really really bad thing it's fine if you're in commercial situations but in the street it's really bad thing especially if you do it after every shot that you take and I see photographers do this I've seen photographers on the street they'll take a photograph and then they'll look at the back of the camera they'll take another photograph and they'll look at the back of the camera and they'll take another photograph and look at it back in the camera now that's completely weird behavior and don't forget normally on the street we're taking pictures of people if

you've taken a photograph of a person and you immediately look on the back of the camera you're signaling to that person that you've taken their photograph and that might get you into a problem depending on the situation the second thing is if you're looking here all the time you're too concerned about your last shot and not concerned enough about your next shot and again on the street when things can happen very quickly I've been down the street and I've literally gone down the street and taken five photographs one after the other and they've all been

reasonable pictures but I would have missed four of those photographs if I was chimping the first picture on the back of my camera the third thing is with chimping and I think this is the this is probably the key thing for me if you're out on the street you're taking photographs you're checking on what you've photographed on the back of your camera and you're not seeing any good pictures then that can lead to a lot of negativity in regard to how you're seeing the day and how you're going to react going forward and one of

the biggest problems is that it can change your behavior so you could be quite relaxed and you're quite happily taking photographs you're quite happily taking pictures not having a problem you then go on the back of the camera and see what you've got and you think oh God they're not as good as I thought they were going to be gotta try harder so the next thing is you're pushing yourself to try things you're starting to do things that you shouldn't really be doing like rushing into situations without looking at the situation first or perhaps standing

a little bit too long in front of somebody with the camera up to your eye you know you start doing things to force the situation simply because of the feedback that you're getting on the back of your camera once you get to that point you've lost it there's no point in taking any further photographs once you're in that mental state you can't really go further forward wood and the irony is that the times out of 10 the LCD doesn't really give you any indication of how good a photograph is it's only when you get it

back home when you put it on your computer that you can actually see if the photograph is good or not foreign I've covered this subject in a lot more detail in another video and I'll link to that below with the other one and also at the end of this video but the basic premise is that if you really want to improve your street photography you need to get closer to your subject there has to be some sort of connection either in distance or within how you feel towards a subject but if you stand off and

become voyeuristic in the way that you shoot I honestly believe you're limiting yourself to what you can achieve as a street photographer and I know this through experience because that was me I was a photographer who would literally stand away from everything take pictures with a long lens look for things walking through the frame and all I ended up doing was regurgitating the same old photographs I became lazy and it wasn't until I forced myself to get closer and closer that I saw a change in the energy of the photography and that in turn pushed

me to become a better photographer sometimes you just need a leap of faith to overcome a fear in street photography a lot of fear is completely irrational anyway otherwise you'll be stuck taking the same photos over and over again and for me as a photographer for the longest time the longest time I felt I wasn't going anywhere as a street photographer and that was simply because I wasn't getting close enough I was too happy to just stand away and let things happen in front of me foreign [Music] photographers observation is one of the most important

tools that we can have at our disposal and yet a lot of Street photographers never look with their eyes they're always fascinated to see how the camera interprets a scene you've seen countless photographers shooting using the live view on the back of a camera even though the camera might have a viewfinder of some description they're actually looking on the back of the camera all the time they're restricting what they can see to literally what they can find on the back of that little screen one of the ways you can improve massively as a photographer is

to take yourself away from the screen and just walk down the street and learn to see photographs you don't even have to take any photographs just walk down the street see what's happening in a doorway see what's happening to people talking to each other see what's happening as somebody crosses the road see what the light looks like at a particular time and day all these things you can do without a camera but all these things train your eye to see photographs thank you this is one of Sarah's key points if you've seen some of our

early videos and our POV videos you'll see that she's quite happy to go up to people to chat to people engage with them in conversation even though they're complete strangers to it one of her key points when it comes to improving as a street photographer is to basically trust your instincts a lot of photographers get into trouble and have bad experiences on the street because they haven't read a situation properly and while more often than not it might just end up with somebody you know swearing at you or a bit of abuse it can escalate

to the point where threatening behavior Can Happen and maybe even assault I mean I do know Street photographers have been assaulted basically if there's something telling you that a situation you are in can be a problem you should trust your instincts and just walk away from it in our world the most common scenario I guess is groups of drunk people particularly as we photograph a lot in Seaside Resorts if you've got a group of people together it can be very difficult to read what the dynamic is within the group you add alcohol into the situation

it can get very aggressive very quickly and while some people are quite happy to play up to the camera we have to trust our instincts and even though the shop might potentially be in a fantastic image if it doesn't feel right then we always walk away but having said this in the 10 years or so that we've been shooting street photography seriously we've never had any major problems foreign following on from that part of avoiding any problems is to make sure you don't stand out in a crowd and this can come down to everything from

what you wear to how you behave your body language and so on if you're on the street and you're trying to make a fashion statement and there are a lot of people that do this or if you're wearing expensive watches carrying expensive camera bags or jewelry or any of those sort of things you will stand out and that will draw attention to you there's also the safety aspect too if you're on the street with a 400 camera bag for example it will attract attention to a thief you know if it looks expensive they'll be wanting

to know what's inside it I'm always of the opinion that you dress down you make sure that you're not wearing expensive jewelry you know wearing expensive watches anything that draws attention to you from people who might want to take something from you so leave all this stuff at home and blend in wear plain clothes look like a tourist if you're in a popular city or you're in a popular Resort all of these things will help you to blend in the way that you behave is also important if you go rushing into a situation rushing up

to somebody to take a photograph that isn't normal behavior people could see it as threatening likewise don't stand on a corner of a street with a camera just pointing at people you know as they walk past or following people with a camera that's just creepy Behavior people will pick up on those sort of non-verbal cues that you get from not acting normally shall we say so it's really important for us anyway to to make sure that we really try and blend in with everybody else that's on the street at any particular time laughs [Music] [Applause]

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