Introduction If you are a street photographer, you’ll find things to disagree with in this article. I often disagree with my own conclusions. I do concentrate on the current DSLR camera and skip over the Leica M since I figure if you’re a street photographer using the M camera you already have your own techniques down. But if street photography is new for you, and you are wondering about what sort of digital camera has [more]
I think I went through the idea of how the camera’s light meter see’s everything as 18% gray and unless corrected will render white or black scenes as a middle gray. Here’s an easy way to test what I’ve said and to learn how to make necessary corrections. The 40D which I’m currently using has three metering patters: spot, center-weighted, and the entire frame. For this exercise I set the metering pattern to center-weighted, pointed [more]
Simple exercise. Ask a friend to drop things (in this case a leaf) and practice trying to catch it. You’ll want to use a high shutter speed, at least 1/1000th of a second, and to make the game harder, a narrow depth of field, maybe even wide open (f1.4). You’ll have to pre-focus and lock focus on the spot that where you expect the object to be (use your friends hand) and then have them [more]
Students have often been surprised to see how my Canon 40D is configured – so I thought I’d go through it here in detail. 1. Always shoot in RAW mode. That goes without saying. 2. The LCD on the back of the camera is set to off. You never want it turning on by itself while you’re shooting on the street for the obvious reason that it draws attention to you. 3. I have the [more]
The idea of the right angle finder is as old as the hills. Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt and many other early street shooters used them. It is a small device that is attached to the viewfinder and allows you to point the camera in one direction while you appear to be looking in a different direction. You can still buy them for most modern SLR cameras. I have one for the Canon SLR I use. In [more]
The techniques for shooting on the subway haven’t changed much since the early days of small portable cameras. The “candid” unposed shot is at the heart of street shooting. The idea of capturing the subject(s) without having them pose or being aware of being photographed. Street photographers will also play with the startled or humorous looks they get when the subjects know they are being photographed – but the idea of finding reality in the [more]
One of the scariest things for the beginning street photographer is – yes you guessed it – photographing strangers. Whether they are walking alone towards you on an empty street, or even in the relative comfort of a crowd – many photographers are afraid to put the camera to their eye, aim it at what might be an interesting street scene, and press the shutter. I began this over twenty years ago, so in order [more]
This is a take off on an old exercise. It used to be something like, “shoot one roll a day.” Or some variation of that. The idea was to force you to keep an eye out for some possible shot during the day, especially while you went about your normal business. The 35mm roll has 36 exposures. My exercise is much easier: shoot 20 digital shots every day for 30 days. The part of the [more]
