5 Street Photography Tips Every Photographer Should Know

Before we start , there are no shortcuts to getting better at street photography .

The genre consists mostly of failure , repetition and times when you're on the train and think to yourself , did I leave the stove on if you're new here ?

My name is Faisal and I'm a photographer based out of Boston , Massachusetts .

And here on the channel , we talk all things street photography , Fuji film , POV these tutorials , all that sort of stuff .

So if you do end up finding this video helpful to you do consider subscribing to the channel and turning on notifications .

This is part three of a series of videos where I go over some tips that have helped me with street photography over the years and hopefully they can help you as well .

Thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this video .

If you're no stranger to street photography , you've probably already learned this the hard way just like me .

And that's simply keeping your camera ready to take a photo .

One of the simplest ways to do this is by how you hold your camera and a lot of street photographers live by the practice of wrapping the strap around the wrist , you can even go a step further with this and always hold your camera up by your face or raise by your chest .

And basically , the whole point of this is to just keep yourself in the most readied position to take a photo when something unexpected happens .

And you know , street photography , 90% of the photos you take are probably going to be an unexpected moment .

I tend to see a lot of street photographers hold their camera around their neck or by their side and you know , that's totally fine .

You should hold or wear your camera , however you feel is most comfortable to you .

But in my own experience , I've found that that extra movement is added time between me raising the camera up and taking a photo and I've missed tons of photos because of that extra time .

It took to get my camera in a ready position to take a photo .

When you the camera .

This way , when you're doing street photography , you're gonna be ready to take a photo whenever you see something happen because you're already in position to take a photo .

Secondly , you're not going to draw any unnecessary attention to yourself .

You know , this motion of bringing your camera up to your face that can raise some attention towards you .

And if you're trying to photograph someone and you're trying to be sneaky about it and not disturb that moment , it could be the difference between , you know , not getting a photo and getting the photo .

So you probably won't be able to hold your camera up like this for hours .

Um Otherwise you wouldn't have any blood in your forearms anymore .

But , you know , you can use your senses when you're out shooting , when it feels like you're in a space or an environment where a potential photo is probably looming , then you can bring your camera up in this position and then simply aim compose and shoot shooting street photography almost naturally , calls you to photograph people .

And I know we've talked specifically about not photographing people and street photography on this channel .

But for a lot of street photographers , people are the main subjects of their photos .

So if that's you , you typically go where the people are , but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing when I'm in large crowds or very busy areas , protests or maybe it's some street event I tend to get overwhelmed in those situations and I sort of lose my observational eye , my spidey senses the amount of people who have commented on my videos saying that I sound like Toby mcguire .

Anyway , when there's a lot going on around me , I can't observe as well .

And so I end up missing some shots or , you know , I end up not seeing anything worth taking a photo of the second .

I start to feel like I'm just getting way too overwhelmed .

I'm getting this sensory overload and I'm not seeing as clearly as I was before .

I'll just leave the area , but I won't go too far .

I want to photograph the outskirts of that large crowd because a lot of the times there's a lot of great photos that happen just outside of the crowd , I'll end up shooting the outskirts of these very busy locations .

And oftentimes I'll see that photos start to reappear again and I can get some really awesome photos of people who also left that craziness .

You know , since you just went from this huge crowd of people to where the crowd starts to fall apart , potential photos start to reappear and stand out so much more to you .

And as you shoot these outskirts of these large crowds , you kind of refuel your creative eye or your observational eye and you can jump right back into the fire or maybe you don't , you just stay out where you were because you realize there's a lot of great photo potential right outside of the madness .

So in part two of my street photography tip series on this channel , I talked about how if you're very new to street photography and you're not comfortable about shooting alone , you should definitely shoot with another person , specifically another street photographer as much as I like to shoot with other people .

I do most of my street photography alone .

And I find personally that it allows me to put all of my focus to the surroundings .

The environment around me and just be a better observer .

When it comes to street photography , that's more than half the deal .

Really .

When you shoot with another person , your mind will be in two places you have your friend , which you want to talk with and then you have all the craziness of the street that's going on around you that you're trying to observe and focus on .

It's just not possible to be 100% focused on one thing or the other .

We need to give our full attention to what is going on around us .

In order to be able to take better photos .

When you shoot alone , you can do whatever you want .

You don't have to feel , you know , held back by your friend because you know , maybe you see a great potential photo location and you want to wait there for 10 , 15 minutes .

You don't have to worry about asking your friend if they're cool with that .

This tip isn't to say that you should just throw all your friends out the window and never shoot with them again .

Um That would be a really bad idea .

It's really the relationships you meet through photography that it's really all about .

But I do think it's worth noting that I get my best photos personally when I'm shooting alone just because I am that much more focused on observing my surroundings .

So before we get into the next tip , we have bonus tip number three .

And that's to have some kind of portfolio ready to show anyone who might ask you what you're doing when you're taking photos on the street .

So that's where today's sponsor Squarespace comes in .

I've been using Squarespace for my own personal portfolio for almost five years now .

It's where I show my favorite recent work as well as run my own digital storefront .

However , it's also what I like to show people on the street who might ask what I'm doing rather than show some Instagram page or photos I just recently took on the back of my camera .

I've made this dedicated unlinked page on my site where I show my favorite photos as well as this QR code for the person to scan and bring up on their own phone quickly .

I basically bookmark this on my phone because it's happened so many times .

It's just an easy way to show people that I'm really a photographer .

Creating a site on Squarespace is incredibly easy .

They have several photo gallery templates that you can choose from .

Once you find one that works for you , it's just a matter of curating all of your best work you want to show .

It's also worth noting you're not bound to any of these template designs either so you can customize it and make your page more unique .

My Squarespace site also helps me make money through my digital store and it's quite liberating for me because the process of selling all these presets is almost entirely automated .

So if you haven't already , I highly recommend you give it a try .

You can head over to squarespace dot com slash Faisal to start your free trial and save 10% off your first purchase of a domain or website .

Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video .

So I used to be a always shoot in manual type of person for all of my cameras .

I just really wanted to have full control over all the settings and make sure that the camera wasn't going to , you know , read an exposure incorrectly .

And thus leading to me missing a shot , camera processing power and the IQ of these cameras has gotten really good over recent years .

And that means setting some parts of the camera to auto isn't really a bad thing to do .

First of all , shooting an auto isn't a bad thing for you to do in general and you shouldn't be ashamed of it if you do .

I think it's always important to understand what the settings of your camera are doing and how to shoot in manual if you had to .

But the whole point of shooting an auto is to lighten the workload on yourself .

So you can put more of your attention to the actual shooting process .

You don't want to be in a situation where you're trying to get your camera settings right ?

You're fiddling with your camera and that's getting in the way of you taking photos .

So I've actually been shooting on P mode on my XC four right here and it's done a really good job of getting great exposures very quickly for me .

When I shoot an auto on this camera , it really lets me put all my attention to what's happening around me .

And I can just focus more on finding good compositions rather than worrying about if I had my exposure , right .

The point is auto settings are supposed to work in your favor .

And when you already have a good general understanding of , you know , the exposure triangle and how to shoot in manual mode , then don't be afraid of using auto exposure settings .

If it means it's going to help you do what you need to do .

This last tip is for any of you feeling doubt creep into your process .

I've lost track of how many times I've gone out to shoot and not take a single photo that I was happy about .

And there's a good chance you've probably been in a similar situation and when that happens , it sucks because you feel like you , you just wasted a whole afternoon or however long you were out shooting , you think your photos are terrible and that you're not going to get better at this .

And the real scary one is when you think to yourself , you're never going to go out and do this again .

It's easier said than done and it took me a long time to come to grips with this .

But you need to accept those fears and those doubts and realize that it's part of the process of getting better at something that you care about .

If you're frustrated with your work and how you're progressing , it's a sign that you actually care about this thing .

I remember when I would come back from days of taking no photos and I'd be like , OK , what are we doing here now ?

Back then ?

In that moment , I was thinking that I was wasting my time .

But in reality , I was putting in the work at getting better .

I was essentially practicing .

You don't get better at something without practicing .

And that's what those days are really .

So , you know , maybe there was a moment where I see this beautiful moment , but I wasn't paying attention to it .

I had my camera turned off or not ready to go end up missing the shot because of that .

But at the end of the day I learned something there or maybe I went out with too many intentions of making a really good youtube video that I didn't end up taking any good photos .

Like literally right now , you could look at these as moments of failure .

But to me , I try to look at it as moments of growth and learning .

So I hope this video helps any of you looking to get better at street photography .

I know most of these things aren't , you know , things that you can just start to implement immediately and start taking better photos , but you can start to put them into practice .

Every time you shoot , these things have helped me become a better observer , become more accepting of when things don't go the way I want them to and just be a better prepared street photographer .

So definitely leave a comment if you have any street photography , tips of your own and you know , you never know who's reading the comments and you might be a huge help to someone else who is a beginner .

Um And if you have any other specific questions to me about my process , uh drop a question in the comments section and don't be a stranger and subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet .

Ok , guys , I hope you enjoy this one .

I love you all .

I'll see you all in the next one .

See you .

Hi and Marina Del Rey and other nearby .

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