How to take bad street photography shots
I think there is a bit of a confusion, especially on social media and YouTube, over what street photography should be like. It, of course, can be whatever you desire, after all, it’s all a matter of personal choice and everyone is free to follow their own artistic aspirations. That being said however, I too have my personal preferences, and there are many things that I find hard to understand in today’s mainstream street photography.
I don’t mean so sound harsh and I’m definitely writing this with good intentions. I’m not saying that I have an authority over the matter and I don’t mean to sound gatekeepy. Quite the opposite actually. I just like to share what I’ve noticed to work, based on my own experience, in order to help fellow street photographers to become better at their craft. So without further ado, here comes some observations and constructive criticism.
As you may have realised, street photography is seemingly easy. Many of us seem to think that all you need to do is just buy a Fujifilm X100V and strap a GoPro to your chest, then run around at the streets while taking hip shots of every person passing along — then posting a POV video of it on YouTube. Most, if not all of the photos executed in this fashion, lack a point or concept. It often appears to be more about producing easily replicated content than well though out street photography.
Believe it or not, YouTube and social media gives a confused and distorted picture of street photography. Remember that most of what you see on those platforms are, willingly or unwillingly, designed to be just content, not actual street photography or any other genuine art. Most of this content is driven by a selfish fantasy of building a following and not to contribute to the society by making art.
Going beyond that, when you dive a bit deeper into street photography, you quickly realise that it actually takes guts and hard work. It can be frightening to take photos of other people, because they can get upset and confront you. You absolutely can get punched. Many of the most common street photography mistakes stem from these insecurities and the fear of getting confronted. They have the tendency to direct the shooting styles and approaches, rendering many of the most typical flaws in street photography, which are:
1. Shooting from the other side of the street
Robert Capa famously said: “if your photos are not good enough, you’re not close enough” and there’s a deep wisdom in that. The most boring, generic and pointless street photos are the ones shot from the other side of the street, unless there’s something extremely interesting happening in the photo that would justify the long shooting distance, but 99,99% of the time there is no other reason than the photographer just being too scared to shoot closer.
Street photography is a humanistic endeavour. It emphasises and revolves around human life in the society and people therefore are typically the main points of interest. I’m skeptical whether you could manage to deliver this message by not going close enough. Sure it’s hard, but then again, that’s the art of it.
2. People walking
Related to the previous point, someone walking on the other side of the street isn’t exactly a decisive moment, even if you’d manage to juxtapose the subject with something else in the frame. There are million more interesting motifs than someone walking. A majority of the most generic street photos are easy shots of basically nothing, which is pretty much synonymous with a photo of a person walking on the other side of the street. This is my biggest critique to myself as well. No matter how much I try to find interesting subjects and decisive moments, some times all I can find is walkers, even though everything else in the scene would look great. Luckily, I have bit of a solution for this later in the article.
Instead of walkers, I’d look for genuine interactions between people like reactions and gestures, those classic decisive moments. For example, someone meeting up with a loved one and giving them a big hug or someone bursting up in laughter — literally anything is more thought provoking, meaningful and emotional than a picture of someone walking in the distance. I’m not saying it can’t work, but very generally speaking, walker shots tend to be on the more boring side of the spectrum where an amazing amount of street photographer defaults to.
If you want to say something about the human condition, is a generic shot of a person walking on the other side of the street really a meaningful way to communicate that? We just think it’s street photography, because we are copying whatever we see on social media, without thinking too much about it, but I bet there are so much more out there.
3. Back of the heads
I’m somewhat guilty of this as well, but taking photos from behind the subject (a person) usually just tells the viewer, once again, that the photographer wasn’t able to gather enough courage to shoot in front of the them. Shooting from behind the person can sometimes result a good photograph, but once again, people’s backs are generally much less interesting than the other side, because you can’t see, for example, facial expressions, which can take away much of the photographs emotional charge and expressive strength.
Every once in a while of anything doesn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t like something like this to become a distinct habit or a mannerism that defines my shooting style and artistic expression.
4. People with hats
Old man with a hat is just about as cliche as excessively photographing vintage cars, neon signs and old petrol stations on Portra 400. For sure, it evokes a sense of timelessness, but an old hat is more like a single component of a photo, but not a very strong subject matter by itself. It’s ok to have something like an old hat as a detail or a finishing touch, but it’s hard to make a compelling image by making an old hat the central subject.
5. People with umbrellas
Same as above.
6. People on their smartphones
One of my absolute least favourite street photos are shots of people on their smart phones. I could perhaps see someone making a carefully crafted social commentary on the topic, but unless it’s something like that — like a capital-R REAL social commentary — someone scrolling their phone is THE lamest idea for a photograph. Admittedly it is nowadays hard to find people doing much else than just that, but that is exactly what makes it such a weak subject matter. Smart phones are a disease of the nation and half of us pretty much hates our phones at this point. Smart phones are basically the new smoking, except people having a smoke would make a ten times more interesting topic.
7. You can do street photography in other places than streets — don’t take it literally
If you really think about it, street photography is a silly term. It implies that is has to be done on a street, but streets are basically just ways to “actual“ places. Unless there is a terrace or whatever, people tend mainly to just WALK on the streets. That’s what streets are for. They connect places. The places that are connected by the streets are actually much more interesting settings for street shots, such as parks, market squares, plazas, coffee shops, restaurants, train stations and so forth. They are much more fruitful venues for street photography, because people actually do other things than just walk and many of those things are more interesting subjects for street photography.
