Street Photography Tips
Here I bring you a tutorial packed full of street photography tips. I’m up in Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and believe me there is no better place to bring you a street photography tutorial. I’ll be showing you how I work, what to look for and the equipment I use for the shots. Amongst all this, I’ll also be showing you the beautiful city of Edinburgh and the vibrant Fringe Festival.
It’s a great tutorial for those who want to learn more about street photography, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it.
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Street Photography Equipment
When it comes to street photography, I like using what’s called a standard lens. This is a lens with a focal length of 50mm on a full-frame camera, 31mm on a crop sensor and 25mm on a Micro 4:3 camera. For more info on focal lengths on different cameras, click here.
I like using that focal length because it gives you an ‘as your eye sees’ look. Meaning it gives you the most realistic view of what is actually there.
I also prefer to use a prime lens when doing street photography as I believe that your limitations force you to be creative. A prime lens certainly does that as it forces you to get close and think about framing things better in shot. This is because you can't zoom in or out very quickly and have limited options for cropping in post.
Like Robert Capa said, “if your photos are not good enough, you're not close enough”. A prime lens forces you to get in there and get the shot.
Equipment for street photography
Biggest Tip for Street Photography
A great tip is ‘don’t photograph the obvious’. Look for things that specifically stand out to you and try and photograph them in a unique way. For example, at the Edinburgh fringe festival, there are lots of street performers. Instead of photographing the performer on their own, try framing them by focusing on the street performer through the crowds or even photograph people photographing the street performers. To me, that’s what's interesting. My interest is drawn to the reaction of the people to the festival and that's what I tried to capture in this shoot.
People reacting to street performers.
People reacting to street performers.
People reacting to street performers.
Best Camera Settings for Street Photography
As you can imagine there is no one specific camera setting that will suit all street photography but there are settings that will create your style. I like to shoot at an aperture of f2.8 which gives you a really shallow depth of field. Now that is not common in street photography; general street photographers like to use f8 or above because it gives you a longer depth of field meaning that if you miss the focus point it's not going to matter too much.
When you shoot at f2.8 like I do, you have to get the focus point absolutely correct and I’ve lost a lot of shots by missing that focus point. But it's the risk I take because I love that look.
When it comes to the rest of the settings, it depends on the light. If it's a really bright day I will put my camera onto aperture priority (A or AV mode), set it to f2.8, and I know that the shutter speed will be quick enough to avoid camera shake and stop things from blurring.
If it's not a bright day (if it's cloudy or you're in a setting where there's not much light) then I might put it onto a fully manual, set the shutter speed to 1/125th of a second (this will avoid camera shake) and put the aperture on f2.8 again. Then I'll put my ISO on auto to pick up the slack.
If the ISO goes high you might get a bit of noise, but when it comes to street photography, it's all about getting the shot. Just get that shot - if there's noise, there's noise. If you've missed the focus point a bit, you've missed the focus point a bit. Just try and get the shot - get the feeling of the place and show the story.
To learn how to use and control your camera settings, click here.
Street photography at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Street Portraits
Another reason I use f2.8 is because it’s great for street portraits. Street portraiture, I think, is one of the most challenging subjects to tackle because not only do you have to get all of your settings right and all your style right, you've got to interact with people.
The only advice I can give when it comes to this is to be yourself, be genuine - go up to people tell them what you want to do and if they're good for a portrait then that's great, if they're not say thanks and walk away, don't worry about it.
Street portrait of a performer
Street portrait of a performer
The beauty of being at places like the Edinburgh fringe festival is that you have loads of performers. You have loads of people that love being in front of a camera. I think my favourite shot was this one that I took down at the Scottish Parliament of a young girl with a mask on her face.
Street portrait of a girl outside Scottish Parliament.
More Pictures from the Shoot
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