We don’t advocate smoking, but if you meet the subject during a moment like this, roll with it. It will remind the viewer in a subtle way that these are true street style photos, and these models are truly random people you stopped on the street. (Be careful about someone with a bunch of shopping bags though, because something so substantial can be too distracting.)
Techniques for Shooting Freehand
Street style photography is a spontaneous art form. You’ll find that because of time and mobility constraints, you won’t have the option of stabilizing the camera with a tripod. Even if you lug around a tripod, most strangers on the street will not have the time or patience to stand around while you set up the tripod and prepare the shot. So here are some extremely useful tips for taking photos freehand.
When you press the shutter, do it gently rather than jamming on it. Steady your breathing and lock your arms in a comfortable position. Military snipers and sharpshooters use these same techniques to steady themselves when they fire their weapons. Whenever you aim anything, be it crossbow or camera, the slightest movement changes the end result drastically, so try to steady yourself. You can also find a makeshift tripod if there is something to rest your camera on safely. If you have to become your own tripod, make sure you’re as comfortable as possible. Stand in a secure position and try not to tense up, because tensing up actually causes your body to vibrate more. If you have to lower the camera, try bending at the hips like you’re bowing to someone. It looks silly, but it is far more stable than bending at the knees, which puts a lot of pressure on your muscles and can cause you to shake.
Turn on the burst setting on your camera. Not all entry-level cameras have this feature, but mid- to high-level cameras will have the ability to take continuous shots as fast as the camera and memory card will allow. This helps you obtain better photos in two ways: First, more shots taken mean more chances that you’ll get the perfect photo. Subjects blink or fidget, pedestrians and cars appear in the background of busy locations, the sun peeks in and out behind fast-moving clouds—all of these factors affect the outcome. You will want as many options as possible when you select the optimal frame. Second, burst setting also increases your chances of getting a sharp photo. Even the steadiest hand can’t help the slight movement of pressing the shutter button. Burst mode enables you to simply hold down the button while the camera fires off many rapid shots with less camera tremor, and thus, sharper images.
Focus: Manual versus Auto
The auto-focus feature on newer cameras will often be reliable, but there are some things to know. There’s a diamond-shaped set of boxes when you look through a camera’s viewfinder (especially dSLR cameras). The diamond-shaped boxes are essentially the targeting crosshairs of the camera. Those boxes help the camera’s lens to identify what to focus on. If you want to focus on something but don’t want it to be in the center of the shot, focus on the object and then press the shutter release halfway until you see the focus lock onto your desired spot. You can then move your camera to compose the photo and depress the shutter completely.
Carrying the Camera (protection and accessibility)
We don’t often use camera straps. It makes us look and feel like tourists and less like professionals—but most important, it gets in the way while we’re working quickly on an impromptu street style shoot. While we prefer to go sans strap, we don’t necessarily recommend going strapless with your own camera. There is certainly the potential for your camera to be stolen by a thief with fast hands or, more likely, you might simply drop your camera.
While camera safety is a common concern, for street style photographers accessibility is equally important. As your subjects bob and weave in and out of crowds, candid, street style opportunities can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. The extra thirty seconds it takes to unbuckle your camera from its layers of casing can mean the difference between getting the shot and walking away disappointed. A good compromise is to have your camera in a sturdy tote bag, from which you can easily grab it at a moment’s notice. The problem, of course, is so could a thief. Take care to be safe with your bag in crowded areas, and also be wary of bumping into walls and doors, since tote bags do not offer much protection against hard surfaces to your camera.
ELEMENTS OF A GOOD PHOTO
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—everything visual is subjective. There are, however, consistent elements present in most professional and aesthetically pleasing photos. We’ll go over how these elements work specifically in a street style situation.
Light
Cameras require proper lighting to capture a good image. Not enough light, and the photo is dark and grainy. Too much light, and the photo is overexposed and washed out. Shooting in the shade can create a bluish hue to your photo, and shooting in partial shade frequently produces dappled and unusable images. Sunny days can give an orange tint, whereas indoor lighting is often insufficient and yellow. These are the challenges every photographer faces. Studio photographers have the ability to control the light in their setting and the time to experiment and optimize their camera’s settings to the studio’s light. Street style photography will not grant you either of those luxuries. Every camera and lens will give you different results in different situations. Only time and experience will help you master the art of selecting the best lighting scenario. Of course, settings on your camera are specifically designed to mitigate this. But ideally, you want to find a spot without too much harsh direct light and minimal cast shadows. Every camera is unique, and it’s important to know the lighting capabilities of your particular model. It’s a good idea to test your camera in various light situations and learn how much light is ideal before you start stopping potential subjects on the street.
“The golden hour” or “the magic hour” is the first or last hour of sunlight in the day, where the quality of the light gives a particularly warm and engaging effect. In the middle of the day, the bright overhead sun can cause overexposure and dark shadows. This harsh lighting is a major issue whenever you photograph people, because it is unflattering and makes the clothes and subject harder to see in the resulting photo.
The leather on his bag is divine. You’ll also notice that the subject is on his phone. You might encounter someone fabulous on their phone—and while we ourselves hate to rudely interrupt people, we have had luck tapping potential subjects on the shoulder and pointing to our camera as a quick way to ask permission for a photo.
During the golden hour shadows are less dark and highlights are less likely to be overexposed. Most important, colors are true and will be more vibrant with brilliant contrast.
Composition
Hand-in-hand with proper lighting is your ability to place your subject and camera in the best spot to give you a well-composed photo. You can’t control natural lighting, but you have almost complete control over composition. Again, practice and experience will improve your understanding of composition, but there are some very solid guidelines to consider when you take street style photos.
What IS composition? It is the placement of subjects and backgrounds. It’s a simple idea, but there are infinite possibilities for where to place your model and camera. Don’t be overwhelmed though; finding the perfect shot is part of the fun!
The good news about composing a street style photo is that you almost always want the subject in the center of the photo. That part is easy. But what to place in the background and from what angle to take the photo? Here are some important guidelines to help you.
Most of the time, try to have the subject stand without anything close to them in the background. Having them stand directly in front of a wall, hot dog stand, tree, car, or other people, for example, introduces factors that might detract from the composition. Also, the more space behind your subject, the better chance at creating bokeh (blur in the background), due to the depth of field. (We explain bokeh further in the next section.)
For a full-length shot (aka a head-to-toe shot), the subject should fill roughly two-thirds of the frame, with the remaining one-third as a space buffer on the sides, top, and bottom. Have about twice as much space above the head as below the feet. This spatial positioning will give you room to crop, since your subject may be off center in the photo. A photo with the subject’s head and feet touching the edges looks cramped, poorly composed, and unprofessional. Besides, you want to have a bit of the background, since this is STREET style photography. The street is part of what makes it different from fashion photos shot in a studio setting. When you take any three-quarters shots, you’ll generally want to shoot from the mid-thigh up, still leaving a little space over the head of the subject.
Get close to your subject to capture shoes, bags, and accessories. When photographing anything lower than you are, get down to its level. It’s especially important to place the camera close to the ground for shoes. If you just aim the camera down the background of the shot is going to be the ground, and that rarely makes for an interesting composition. Again, this is street style, so include the urban backdrop when you can. Use it to make a pleasing frame for your composition. Part of what makes street style photography unique is the beautiful backdrops. Avoid backgrounds of blank walls or pavement.
A common adage in photography composition is: “If your photo isn’t very good, GET CLOSER.” This is a very useful thing to remember, because many amateur photographers think that what they see with their naked eye is what the camera will capture. You must always try to look through the view finder, or on your point-and-shoot’s screen and consider only that. Just don’t overdo it—in street style photos, you still need to try and show the outfit as a whole when possible. Make sure to take photos from many different ranges and angles. Step forward. Step back. Step to the side. Walk to the opposite side of your subject and have him or her turn around.
Don’t forget to focus. While framing the shot, remember to check that you focus on the person. You always want the person in focus. ALWAYS.
Sharpness and Bokeh
We’ve gone over how to shoot in order to get your subject in focus and sharp—but what about the background? Ideally, street style photos have blurred backgrounds to help the subject stand out. This effect is called bokeh, which arrived in photography from the Japanese. The effect is typically created by using a camera lens with a narrow depth of field. Certain lenses, when focused on a subject at a certain distance, will render the subject sharply in the photo while the background and foreground are blurred. Bokeh is not mandatory for a great street style photo, but it can be a very effective technique to have in your tool belt.
To understand bokeh, you must understand depth of field. This is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a photo that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Different lenses will have different depth of field ratios. This is why we recommend using dSLRs with fast, wide-angle prime lenses. Anything from 17mm to 50mm with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 to f/1.2 will most likely give you a narrow depth of field, and thus a lot of bokeh. Proximity to your subject also affects bokeh, and you will notice that the background will have more bokeh in a close-up shot. We do want to warn you that there can be too much bokeh. This occurs when the depth of field is very narrow, if, for example, you focus on the subject’s eyes and the tip of their nose is out of focus. We have never encountered this problem ourselves, so if you use lenses that we suggest, you shouldn’t have any problem. This sort of issue usually comes up in studio photography and macro photography, where different kinds of lenses are used.