What do we need to shoot a street picture?

1. A camera!
Whatever kind of a camera is good! Either it is a ridiculously expensive SLR or an unbelievably cheap point and shoot compact! Either it shoots digital or it shoots film. Either it weighs a ton or it weighs few grams. ANY camera is fine!

2. A public place!
This can be out in the streets or at the beach or inside a hotel's lounge or in a diner place or inside a supermarket or a mall or a school or whatever PUBLIC place! This public place must be visible in our picture! And things must be happening in this public place.

3. People!
Exactly, people! We need people in candid situations!
Definition of "candid" from Merriam-Webster's online dictionary: "subjects acting naturally or spontaneously without being posed"
Definition of "candid" from Wikipedia: Candid photography is best described as un-posed and unplanned, immediate and unobtrusive. This is in contrast to classic photography, which includes aspects such as carefully staged portrait photography, landscape photography or object photography. Candid photography catches moments of life from immersion in it.

4. A story, a unique moment, an interaction between people and their environment or between people and people, a special "something" that is being happening in front of our eyes and it is worth capturing in a picture!
There's nothing special in people strolling down a street if we can't focus our attention in something special that's being happening in front of our lens!

Street Photography, Documentary Photography and Photojournalism , often go together. Still, there are subtle differences between these 3 categories.
But these differences are not the subject of this SIMPLE street photography guide.

Let's see now some examples of pictures that are NOT street.
We have the street,
we don't have the people here.

Here we have the people
but we don't have the environment, the place!

This is a carefully planned and composed shot. It was taken with a telephoto lens. Street photography needs normal or wide angle lenses. The closer the better. Street photography needs you to be almost a part of the scene, IN the scene. Here we have a "Photojournalistic-People" photograph.

Here we have the place,
we have the people but there is no interaction between the two of them. Another spontaneous portrait.

Very often, the line between Street Photography and Photojournalistic-People, or Spontaneous portraits is very THIN. And surely you must have noticed that the Yard's collections contain many pictures that are not "pure" street photographs, exactly because of this very thin line.

For a more complete guide about Street Photography don't forget to click on this great [link] and download the 160 pages book included.

It's mostly full of great examples of what Street Photography really IS.