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We asked our members to describe how they shoot their street shots.
Some of them took the time to respond, sharing with the rest of us their techniques.
A big thanks to all of you guys!

~d-godfather said the following:

“I find it more fulfilling during alone times, when I am in solace, coz there’s no inhibitions, your bare out there, nothing to think about, just you and your environment as your canvas. Walks that can stretch to a kilometer, worrying nothing if your pals are lagging behind or tired already, it creates an atmosphere without barriers… I am most happy when I capture moments, emotions of other people. I appreciate life even more, the smiles, frown, gestures that put color unto their lives… I always look forward to serendipity.”

* not really a style... but rather a description of the experience of shooting street....



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~Phaedrus-42 said the following:

I started doing street photography quite recently, so I am still experimenting with various techniques. Mostly I go and hang around certain public places with my camera and preteend to shoot the buildings and trees for a while, and when the people seem to get comfortable with the camera around, I switch over to street mode.

When I am just walking around with my camera, I practice the "shooting from the hip" method. Well... actually it is generally below the hip, but "shooting from the crotch" sounds weird... I just keep an eye out for interesting people or compositions hanging around and click when I find it. I am still practicing my aim, so few shots turn out good this way.

I use a very simple point-n-shoot camera that doesn't have manual focusing, so most of the time I just set the appropriate f-number (2 choices only here) and exposure time and hope it will focus correctly...




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*mugshotpro said the following:

Well, it's simple... I take along my Pocket size Polaroid i830 everywhere I go. Everywhere! I used to get so angry when I was out running errands or shopping and I would see something or someone that would make a great photo...but I didn't have my camera on me. So now I take it everywhere, and I keep it on and ready to shoot when the opportunity arises. One simply can not predict when opportunity will present itself, so I keep ready at all times... like a predator ready to leap upon a meal... or something like that
I do find it ironic, when I travel somewhere I would think would be filled with opportunity, only to discover a card loaded with "tourist" pictures when I get home; and other times, an epic shot will be waiting for me at the metro stop You just never know, so always be ready.


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=EricForFriends said the following:

My method for street shots? I have no method, only bad habits... If someone who wouldn't know me would follow me while I'm on Street safari, they might think I'm suffering from ADHD. Sometimes I barely stop moving taking a shot. I shoot 'from the hip' a lot. I may be shooting architecture in one shot, move my camera half a centimetre down and take a street shot. I carry a big DSLR. So, if the person following me would be one of these seriously serious photographers, after a while he'd feel inclined to slip into a photo shop, buy one of these 500 mm lenses and smash it on the back of my head.
He'd be right of course. As there is probably some educational purpose behind this booklet, I hasten to add that it's extremely important that aspiring photographers look through their viewfinder for years on aggregate, take their time to compose and frame, and that 500 mm lenses have no business in Street anyway. The problem is, although I prefer to look through the viewfinder and take my time too, my 'method' works for me.
So, let me try to explain why.
There's some discussion about shooting from the hip, the argument being that people see it anyway. Well... yes, no and maybe. Someone with nothing else on his mind and looking at you will. Then again, someone who's busy interacting with someone else might not. If you're inside your subject's peripheral vision, he might not notice either. On the other hand, looking intently at someone and bringing one of these big zoomlenses to your eyes... it's psychologically much like pointing your finger at someone's nose and shouting 'YOU!!!' It's easy to understand why many people don't like it.
Money being what it is, my basic kit consists of a Panasonic Lumix compact and a more advanced Canon 450D DSLR. The Canon is more responsive than the compact, give me more control over its settings and it's still not so large that there could be coming some death-ray from it. Best of all, it looks natural to let it hang from my neck and keep it balanced with my hand, while I keep my thumb, not my index on the button: a standard Street shooting position for me.
The second argument against consistently shooting through a viewfinder is that there often not enough time - the 'defining moment' is not called a moment for nothing. So, I'm prepared to go with my reflexes, which has led to some extreme shooting positions:
- next to my shoulder: the camera was there in a resting position because I had just taken another shot; it was just a flick of the wrist to bring it into shooting position when the crowd opened for a moment, showing an interesting couple;
- ultra-low, the camera resting on my bag: I was looking into the bag for something, when a potentially interesting situation became truly interesting [my picture "Horse...!"];
- with my right arm just hanging straight down beside my body, the camera hanging in portrait position. I was walking past a family on an otherwise empty harbour quay, no other way to 'hide' the camera.
Unusual viewpoints don't just come from where I shoot from, but also where I shoot to. Shooting beside your target may prevent it from getting disturbed by you, result in an unusual and therefore interesting composition, and/or allow in more context. I like context in my Street pictures, but that's just me. [My picture "Audience of One"]

In general I like to shoot on busy places for Street, but not too busy. There should be empty spaces and opportunity for people to look, interact and do other things than just walk. Waiting rooms, museums, courtyards, squares and parks are better than the streets themselves. I rarely shoot Street in my own hometown, it has no decent squares and going somewhere else gives me anonymity and fresh eyes.

Last but not least, if possible I do try to anticipate: find the cleanest spot in the window, set my camera in the right zoom, ISO and lighting, and look 10-20 m ahead in the row of passing people. Sometimes it's just going by the gut feeling that there's hanging a good picture in the air.
"
"What? Where?"
Done in full stealth mode, with a compact on belly height. Because I came from a meeting, I happened to be wearing the same outfit as the civil servants dominating the scene - I could have been one of them, taking some snaps for a report about the desirability of a 6-lane bypass through this area. I had had my eyes on this guy but I swung around to this situation after taking a picture of something else.

"Horse...!"
Unusual, ultralow viewpoint, notice the camera is even looking up to the girl; the horse becomes as huge as it must be in her eyes. I'm not really looking for weird viewpoints, it easily gets contrived or boring, but in this case it just happened, because there was no time to get the camera up to my eyes, and it's okay with me.

"Audience of one"
Shooting beside the subject, and context. Shot years before I had heard of this thing 'Street', but my publisher had asked me to shoot more people. Shot conventionally, looking through the viewfinder. Had I pointed the camera straight at the lovers, one of them might well have noticed me - situation gone. I like the texture of the benches and all the empty seats express the isolation of the lovers, the way they live inside their own world.
This was taken on the courtyard of the Szczecin castle - a good example of busy but not too busy. In such a situation, acceptable pictures may come in bundles.

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*Kel-----Bel said the following:

For me, your greatest street shot is always there, you just have to find it. When I go out, I make sure that I have a portable camera; lugging my pro SLR is too bulky and too noticeable by others. I use a beat up film camera and lightweight, manual, fixed focal length lenses--I carry no more than two. Fixed foal lengths help me hone in on what's going on around me: if I have to get in closer, I walk closer and vise versa. I also like to use film because the margin of error is greater than digital. If I botch up the exposure getting my ideal shot, film will give me a more workable print then digital. I carry light, use public transportation and carfully observe the people around me.



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~DocRobert said the following:

It's just something that I don't actually think about. It feels slightly natural while I am flicking the button every few seconds and changing rolls of film every so often.

What else I find is that I don't always feel like I am moving my camera into position, but instead, I am moving the world around me to fit exactly the way that I want into to the refraction of the parabola lens...sometimes I feel that weightlessness experienced when you look out onto the sea, or down a steep cliff.

But everytime when I take a picture I am showing what it is like to...I guess see the things the way that I do; and not just some things, but everything. Everything from the man in the corner to the snow drifting from an alley. I want the viewer to live in my shoes, to live inside of my dark and endlessly beautiful world of intellectual freedom and floating between the smokestacks and skyscrapers, to feel the emotion that is so hard to describe through words. It fuels my photographic eye and allows me to take pictures the way that I want to.

What's more is that I will take a picture of almost anything. Some people could waltz through my gallery and say that I am just taking pictures of random things, but I really only try to capture the angles, shapes, and people. The randomness is only an effect of I don't really care about what I am taking a picture of. If the picture feels the way that I do, then I know that I have done a good job.

The only thing that becomes tricky about my methods is that my photographic thirst is never quenched, and quests to Walgreen's to pick up that essential inch high canister becomes often.
But, if you could see things, and feel the things that I feel when I do the things that I do, who would ever want to stop it?



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~gato1 said the following:

Here are some patterns I have come up with to get better photos when I shoot in the streets.

To start with, I go out there on my own. Being alone helps me focus on my subjects and gives me freedom to move around or stay in a spot for as much as it takes to have a better result. When I was younger i tried shooting in the streets when walking around with friends. Mostly on my journeys around Europe. After a while I got lost and everybody was nagging about me delaying them again. We ended up spending a lot of time trying to find each other again.

Everybody has some favorite themes. It is good to go after them, but I always try to shoot at new things every time even if they do not catch my eye at once. This only happens because I am not used to focus on these themes. It does not necessarily mean that they are not interesting.

Patience is a key word in street photography. I select backgrounds. One of my favorite themes is the interaction of people in posters with real people, which if you think about it once you press the button they also become people in posters in a way. So, I first spot a background that I find interesting, eg a huge poster. I do not rush. I set the light meter, the focus, the zoom, everything. I visualize a passerby in the frame (his direction, his figure etc) and I wait for him to pass looking through the viewfinder. I have spent long time standing still in this position, waiting for someone to enter in my frame. In this picture –- I noticed that the woman in the poster is blowing in a way that if a passer-by walked in front of her moving to the right, it would feel like she is actually giving motion to him with her blow. So I stood there, waiting. And there she was!!!

I try to make people get used to my presence and eventually ignore me. I act naturally and spend time in the spot. I sometimes take some shots that i do not find such interesting just to gain the tolerance of people around me. This is the best way to actually get as natural images of street life as possible.

To make people ignore me, i make them feel that I ignore them too. I want them to think that I am not after them and in some cases that they even stand in my way when I point the camera. It happens sometimes when I am standing still, having locked the background in the viewfinder waiting for someone to pass, that someone waits for me to shoot before he passes in front of my lenses. I then pretend to be disturbed and kindly allow them to pass quickly so that I can go on with my shooting. They then pass through my frame in a hurry feeling that they interrupted me, while I press the button if I see that they match well into my frame…

If i turn the camera to someone’s face in the worst case he will call the police or try to beat me. In the best case he will react to the camera by smiling or looking straight at it, which means that in any case the moment that caught my eye in the first place is lost. What I usually do to avoid that, is that I point the camera a bit to the side of the subject that I am interested in. He will normally take a quick look at me and since he will think that I am shooting at something else other than him, he will go back to what he was doing. So, after I take some shots in his side, just to make him believe that I am not attempting to include him into my frame, I find a good moment to turn the camera just a bit when he is not looking at me and press the button quickly, before I turn the camera back to what I was pretending to shoot in the first place.

But how do I know when he is looking at me or not? In such cases, or even when I have locked the background and wait for someone to pass in my frame, as I described above, i often keep both eyes open when looking through the viewfinder, in order to be totally aware of my surrounding.

Sometimes, using a wide angle lens makes it all easier. This is because wide angle lenses are likely to include a subject in the frame giving him the impression that he is standing way out of my shooting field.

Recently, I pointed my camera to shoot at two ladies sitting on a bench of a bus stop. On their side, on the bus stop there was a big fashion poster, so I wanted to include both the ladies and the poster in my frame, pursuing an interaction between them. I pointed the camera to the poster, but I used wide angle so both the ladies were in the frame, even though they thought I was shooting straight at the poster. Naturally they got curious to see what I was shooting at. One of the ladies bent over and took a better look at the lady on the poster. So not only did she not know that she was in my frame, but her ignorance made her have a better interaction with the lady in the poster making my picture much more interesting.

If, after pressing the button, I suspect that someone is annoyed and is looking at me, I avoid looking back at him. In other words I pretend to be focused on something else, other than him, so that he believes that I was not actually shooting at him.

Of course, to talk about ethics as well, when it comes to sensitive groups of people that might actually have a reason to not want to be photographed, such as immigrants, I always ask permission to shoot. If they do not want me to take their picture, I give them a big smile and move on.

Most of the tips I described so far concern taking pictures when having plenty of time to think about the frame, the subject etc. What about when there is no time at all? When there is minimum time to point the camera and press the button, hoping that everything went well? In such cases, the first thing to consider is to have the subject focused. In order to be covering a wide depth of filed any time, when there is adequate light, i preset the camera in the AV mode and the aperture value at 8 or more. This way, i achieve a satisfying depth of field in my image that will probably secure that my subject will be focused.

Since photography is all about writing with light (etymology of the greek word photo=light and graphy=writing) it is essential to pick the time of the day with the most appropriate light to go out and shoot. My favorite time to shoot is either early in the morning, or before sunset, whet that light is softer.

When shooting documentary images, for example in demonstrations, I try to locate professional photographers and I mingle with them. They usually move in groups so they are not hard to spot. This gives me more freedom to shoot and at the same time I feel secure since most people take me for a pro. Of course the most expensive the camera you have, the more useful this tip is. No matter how many professionals shoot on your side, it is unlike that you will pass as a pro, shooting with a compact camera.

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*cheekymonkeyali said the following:

Basics:
I prefer no flash.
I prefer no long lens, but I'm not religious about it.
I prefer narrow DOF to isolate the subject - mostly.
I work with autofocus on, centre point only - mostly. If interest isn't centre I focus by depressing the shutter before reframing. If I want something very different from what the camera would choose I go manual - for instance with reflections.

Equipment:
* Canon EOS400 with 50mm 1.8 - I would like something slightly wider, an equivalent of 50mm with crop sensor maybe. There's a lot to be said for this lens but its achilles heel is a tendency to hunt on autofocus and a very narrow manual focus ring. At the price nobody can complain though!
* Canon EOS400 with Sigma 17-70 - using the 50mm has kind of made me forget to put this lens on for street shooting, but it's definitely usable even at night with manual settings. I tend to have it on as a walkaround lens anyway.
* Panasonic Lumix LX3 - Gives me a wider field of view, operates in complete silence, easier to carry on a belt. I'd prefer if it had a viewfinder, but the screen is clear and bright.
* Various old film cameras I am starting to play with but don't have results yet. My developing tank is in the post

Way of working:
Mostly I have to have the camera in my hand and ready to go. That kind of puts me in "photgraphy mode." I prefer to be walking to seek out subjects. There are definitely locations which would work better from standing still and waiting but I don't really do it. I think I probably should, but I'm pretty impatient. I am always scanning for people, for places, for details, for colours, for situations. Often I am attracted by different kinds of shots and my street shots are interspersed with still-life-ish and landscape-ish shots.

I prefer to frame the shot. Although I will definitely try shooting blind on occasion I find the results mostly unsatisfactory. The "decisive moment" referenced by HCB is the moment of aligning geometries - not event significance. That's why his composition is flawless. You can't possibly get that except by extreme luck with a hip shot. I can't get the composition of HCB even with the viewfinder You get a lot more "trash shots" for sure (or let's say I do).

I am better than when I started but I have more to learn than I have learned. I miss a lot. I hate near misses. But I have a few favourite "street" guys whose pictures I am looking at all the time, some of whom I know are/were unhappy with the label. Also they have distinctive styles which call for different techniques. Even such a basic thing as black and white versus colour. I like Bresson, Stieglitz, Winogrand, Leiter, Strauss - all completely different photographers.

One thing to keep in mind is that people aren't that scary - honest! I have never had any bother with them anyway. More have asked me to take their pic than have asked to have one deleted (none if you don't count my girlfriend ). The objections I have read about using an SLR seem to me to be the opposite of what is true. By being unobstrusive yourself most people don't notice. Those who do see you using an SLR seem to think, "oh he's a photographer" and don't bother. Maybe they think they are not significant enough that they could be the subject. It may be something in the way I behave, but I don't know. I do like to shoot in situations where there are lots of people or something going on though. Look at Winogrand on youtube to see how little it matters. Always smile! Half of the times you get busted people will pose. OK, that's not what you're looking for maybe but take the picture anyway. You could even take an email address and send it.

I try to take the pictures I like, and not what other people might like. Otherwise all our pictures will end up the same. Sometimes the result of this is clear in "views" terms, but you have to be true to yourself. My most favourited pictures are not my favourite pictures.

I found out how much I know my camera by trying to use my girlfriend's Nikon - felt like I had 10 thumbs! Still, the most important piece of equipment is behind your eyes. I try to work on that the most



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=gazzara said the following:

My way of doing things has really been trial and error but seems to be effective. It is not blatant but very sly indeed. What I tend to do is to actually point the camera slightly off of the target I want to shoot. That way I can get a focal point of roughly the same distance.

I have noticed that people can get twitchy when they see me do this but tend to settle down once they realise that the camera is not directly pointing at them. When they get more natural I will turn the camera on them and take the shot and then move back to my original position with the camera.

This works most of the time unless you have to point and shoot blatantly for action that you would otherwise miss.

These 2 photos were taken using the above technique and as you can see look pretty natural with the subjects doing what they would normally do.



With the above shot I was looking further down the line of the wall so it looked like I was getting a different shot, I then turned it back on them when they looked comfortable that it wasn't them I was shooting



The above shot was using the good ol wall trick again

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*EarthHart said the following:

Since coming to Street in the past few months, I've found that my green beard must have magical properties as folks don't see me much when I'm shooting. Well, I do sometimes wear my cloak of invisibility
Most of my work is now shot with a Nikon D70S, & a 18-70mm. I still use my Minolta Dynax 500si, with a Sigma 75-300mm, to get in close for those candid portrait shots I like.
The one thing I enjoy about the D70S, is shooting from the thigh with the camera balancing on my fingers, forefinger on the shutter release.
I get a good crop from Market Days in Wells, and from the folks & tourists of Bath. I spend some time scanning the place, seeing what's going down, the movements of people, the crunch points and cafes, then I head out & keep my eyes open.

And I have to thank John for setting me the challenge of stepping outside my comfort zone (Reflections, Flowers & Plants and Architecture)and shooting Street. I've always been an observer of Life, but shooting Street has opened my eyes so much more to what's around me & my environs.

Here are three different types of shot:

Through the viewfinder

Blind Table shot

Walking thigh shot