How to gain speed and confidence in STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

[Music] now when it comes to taking photographs as strangers the two biggest factors that hold a lot of photographers back are confidence and speed and these go hand in hand to some extent one kind of helps the other now for me the difference between a good Street photographer and an average Street photographer isn't just about Talent it's also about how confident they are when they're working and how quickly and efficiently they can take their photographs so how do we build speed and confidence quickly when we're out on the [Music] street you know a lot of

photographers don't like taking photographs of strangers on the street really they they find it quite fearful and a lot of this fear comes from trying to shoot in a style that they're just not comfortable with especially when they first start out if your comfort zone on the street is standing on a street corner waiting for people to walk through that scene this is where you start this is actually where I started you have to give yourself lots of positive experiences when you're on the street because that leads to confidence and confidence leads to losing the

fear and when you lose the fear which you will you can really start to progress as a street photographer and if you're in a hurry and you want to build your confidence up very quickly one of the best ways of gaining really positive experiences is to go out on the street with a confident experienced Street photographer there's a safety in numbers aspect here obviously which helps with the fear but watching an experienced photographer will help you to realize that most of the fear is in the mind and not actually on the street how you trample

over me well I hope you have a fantastic afternoon see you later this is very basic but if you're on the street and you're always checking your camera or you're always messing back with the menu or the functions the chances are you're going to be missing photographs and the whole process of taking pictures will become very slow and unfortunately slow photographers do attract a lot of ATT attention you need to be completely at ease with your camera to the point where you almost don't think about it it's almost like the camera is secondary to the

actual photograph now if you AR at the point where this is all second nature to you go out and practice you know you don't have to go on the street to practice go and take your kids out into the park or take your dog for a walk just get used to the menus get used to the functions get used to the way that the camera Works get it set up to how you like it I'm amazed how many photographers don't actually set their cameras up to how they actually want to shoot and if you own

several cameras choose one for Street and kind of stick with that if you can don't chop and change cameras all the time it just leads to confusion I've done this and missed some really good photographs as a result of me messing around changing cameras all the time I have photographs which years later I still talk about as the ones that got away now when you're on the street don't take too much Gear with you it's heavy and again too much Choice leads to indecision and that can slow you down one camera body one spare camera

body and maybe one or two lens is that's all you need to take Street photographs but don't forget the batteries and the spare cards because again I've been there and I've done that and when you're looking for a battery that you forgot to pack in your camera bag it's not a good place to be I can tell [Music] you I make no apologies for making this point once more on this channel I think this is a really important point to make so I'll keep making it you know as long as I've got this YouTube channel

I'll keep making this point always shoot for yourself never shoot for those Anonymous people scrolling your Instagram account while sitting on the toilet first thing in the morning social media can absolutely decimate any confidence that you have in your photography social media is a weird thing algorithms put pictures in front of people and those people may or may not like what you do and social media leaves you wide open to people having a say on your photographs even though you've never met them before and you will probably never meet them ever again so put your

photographs up answer any comments that you might get and ignore everything else you know certainly don't put any stock in the numbers of people liking your pictures and ignore anybody on social media who bleats on about how you should be taking Street photographs you know just ignore those people it's always the least talented people that seem to have the biggest [Music] voices photographers like to copy other photographers I don't know why it's kind of a weird thing we have we see a photograph on somebody else's shop we like to go and try and take the

same photograph okay that's you know we just it just seems to be something that photographers do but trying to do this trying to copy somebody else's photograph or somebody else's style is a completely pointless exercise it's a distraction the problem is that you'll spend time and effort while you're out on the street trying to find these photographs which you've seen on Instagram or in books and in the meantime you're missing all these other photographs that you would naturally be drawn to if you just let your eye do what it wants to do and be drawn

to the things it wants to be drawn to you have to spend the time on the street working with moments that catch your eye you have to work with things that stimulate the visual side of your brain you know and then you have to work out the methods which you'll use in order to get those photographs quickly and effortlessly don't spend your time out on the street trying to be a faximile of somebody else it doesn't work it will never work now I'm not saying that you shouldn't be influenced by photographers by all means go

and buy the books go to the exhibitions you will subconsciously soak up a lot of the visual information within those photographs anyway and this will end up filtering through into your work over time as a matter of course but it will do this in a way that will complement what you already [Music] do now things like expensive clothes shoes watches and camera bags will always attract attention but we're Street photographers we don't really want to attract attention to ourselves so unless you are someone who specifically wants to fill your Instagram feed with lots of beautiful

selfies of you and your gear always dress down wear something practical and appropriate to the conditions that you'll be photographing in and think about what happen happens if the weather is due to change and a little tip here we always carry a packable waterproof jacket with us something that fits in our camera bag so that we always have something which will keep us dry if it rains and an extra layer if it starts to drop in temperature and don't forget your feet you know good shoes are absolutely essential to Street photographers they will determine whether

or not we have aching backs and sore knees at the end of a long day now these shoes don't have to be expensive as long as they fit properly and as long as they give support and cushioning to the foot you're pretty much good to go what we do is we tend to find a brand and style we like and we tend to stick with [Music] those now when we take our cameras out onto the street it's absolutely essential that we know what we can and can't do in our own countries with regard to taking

photographs of people in a public place and this also applies to things like gdpr and Publishing you know we're Street photographers we have to know what the law is how can we confidently take photographs somewhere if we don't know if we're going to be breaking the law or not and yet I'm absolutely amazed at how many Street photographers simply have no clue about what they can and can't do on the street and if I had a pound for every comment that I had on this YouTube channel about the legality of what we're doing in Street

photographers I'd be a very rich man so there are a lot of people out there who simply do not know what the law is please go and find out [Music] learning to read body language is such an important part of street photography but it's something that nobody really ever mentions you know we're literally taking photographs of other human beings you know we we should have a basic understanding of how different people might behave when there's a camera pointed in their Direction but so many photographers go blazing into a scene and end up getting shouted at

because they completely misread the situation and learning to avoid certain people and certain situations is one thing that will help your confidence grow and in order to do this what we have to do is concentrate Less on the camera and more on our visual senses you know we've got to be looking at the scene all of the time we've got to be assessing what's happening in front of us all the time and we can't do that if we're fixated on our cameras so the next time that you're out and you don't have to have camera

with you just walk up and down a street and just take in what's happening take in what people are saying to each other and I would thoroughly recommend that everybody tries this if you're not used to actually reading a scene just go and do this just go and walk walk up and down streets and just look at human beings look at the way that they talk to each other and they act with each other [Music] [Music] [Music]