Street Photography
An authorial approach to street photography requires rejecting standardization. Here are ten key principles for deconstructing the rules and building your own visual identity.
10 Tips for Street Photography
1) Visual independence. Make your own mistakes and turn them into your own language. Don’t follow someone else’s path.
2) Beyond groups and social media approval. Differences are a source of richness—don’t be afraid to be truly personal, even if it means getting a few fewer likes.
3) Go back and analyze your archive. Look for recurring elements; you can find your way forward even by starting with your archive. A retrospective analysis can lead to surprising insights.
4) Keep in mind that your photography should reflect who you are. Photograph what you love—or what you hate (which is harder). Little by little, elements will emerge in your photographs that are uniquely yours. Intimately yours. That makes sense.
5) Nothing is absolute. If you want your work to have historical and documentary value, however, you’ll need to keep in mind that you’ll have to adopt the ethical standards of photojournalists. One of the few cornerstones of this genre is to avoid staging. If you’re taking posed photos, that’s a different story—whether it’s staged portraiture or any other blend of genres. You can choose to take a discreet approach or a more invasive one. It depends on what you’re looking for… but above all, it depends on why you’re looking for it. Ask yourself why. You can aim for the subject to look directly into the camera (I like it in very rare cases, but that’s a very personal matter).
6) Form and content should be connected in some way. And secondly, they should reflect who you are. Look for and find yourself in your photos. After all, they say as much about you as they do about the world you photograph.
7) If you have a sense of humor, it would be strange if that humor NEVER showed up in your street photography. If one of your defining traits is NEVER visible in your street photos, something is wrong. Of course, this only applies once you’ve been taking photos for a while.
8) Control and chance. Unlike other photographic genres, street photography requires a combination of control and chance on the part of the photographer. If you strive for absolute control—as is often the case in other genres, such as architectural photography, certain types of portraiture, or still life—it won’t yield results. The result is that certain levels of introspection and analysis will be completely missing, and certain elements will be lacking when you review your archive. Have the courage to let your instincts guide you, sometimes. Otherwise, a certain rigidity will emerge in your stories. They may be very beautiful, but they will lack a more intimate quality.
9) The equipment you use. Personally, I’ve always opted for small, unobtrusive cameras. Unfortunately, this type of camera is disappearing from the market. In any case, find the perfect fit in the equipment that best reflects your personality, creative goals, and vision. If I want to be discreet and be seen as little as possible, it’s clear that I won’t choose a huge, noisy camera. My cameras are the Leica M (for the viewfinder, above all—a unique window onto the world) and the Sony A9 and A7R4. All three are fairly small, though I would have preferred even smaller cameras… All three have very discreet, quiet shutters. As for lenses, find the fixed focal length that suits you best and make it your own. But don’t forget to experiment with other focal lengths from time to time.
10) Be wary of anyone who offers rigid definitions of street photography. The only thing certain about the genre is that it takes place in public spaces or places open to the public, and that, conceptually, people must be at its core—not posing. Anyone who presumes to define it based on content is simply clouded by their own interests, which do not necessarily coincide with yours or those of others, in general. Just look at the differences between Daidō Moriyama, Gilden, Bresson, Erwitt, Webb, David Alan Harvey, Vivian Mayer, etc., etc.
