Is it just me or does most street photography today look the same?
While it's not identical, I think you'll agree we see a lot of similar
trends. I think the problem might be with those of us who are teaching
street photography, and I'd like to explain this video while also not teaching
street photography. When you are out shooting street photos, do you find you're
on the same walk, shooting the same angles or the same details every single
day? You also sometimes find that you're looking for the same compositional tricks,
like reflections or leading lines. I noticed myself doing this a couple of
months ago and I realised I was bored while I was walking around. I
was leaning towards the same shots and the same compositional tricks again and
again. But then I started to think, why am I doing this? I realised
that a lot of the shots that I was leaning on as like, this
is a good photo, were actually prepicked for me. They were prepicked by the
examples of photography that I see on Instagram or short form videos on my
reels or TikTok, without consciously thinking about it or going out looking
for those shots. It just became the sort of thing that I naturally wanted
to see through my viewfinder. While I love TikTok and I find it's a
really funny place to be, sadly, a lot of photography on TikTok comes down
to, like, compositional tricks or photography hacks or mobile phone
photography hacks. And while these are good confidence building techniques to
learn as a beginner, a lot of creators are just making them because they
know they're going to get engagement. And for those of us who've been practising
photography for a bit longer, these are not the sort of things you want
to be expecting yourself to shoot. You want to try to shoot something different
for yourself. Following these sort of techniques and guides for too long won't
lead to you finding your own voice in photography. The problem with these
tricks and methods is that, well, if I learned them from TikTok and you
learned them from TikTok, and then 500 other people learned them from TikTok,
then we're all taking the same photos again and again forever.
So we know the problem, but what is the solution? Destroy our phones. What?
No, we don't have to destroy our phones. We just need to stop paying
attention to those who are teaching us to shoot in specific ways. And look,
that does not mean don't watch photography videos. There are plenty of amazing videos
out there with valuable information, and that's because within any genre of
photography, there are like an infinite number of things to learn. But following
exact guides on camera settings, how to shoot, or compositional guides will just
lead to all of us shooting the same old. Try instead to pick up
a photo book or two or just go browse them in a bookshop. I
only have a couple of photo books at the moment, but whenever I flick
through some of them, I start to realise the things I notice about
photography is rarely the compositions. It's usually the time and the place
and also the emotion that it brings out. Even just from flicking through a
few pages of a photo book, you start to realise you never want to
look at an image and go, wow, that composition. Though sometimes
there'll be a great subject that happens to also be paired with a fantastic
composition. But a lot of the times, the best photos, when you actually look
at it from a compositional perspective, there's not much to write home about.
A bad composition with uninteresting content is a bad photo, we can
both agree on that. But a good composition with uninteresting content is
still a bad photo. Just because everything's where it's supposed to be
doesn't mean it's interesting. Leading lines don't make for good content.
Reflections don't make for good content. Active photo books really, really quick.
You'll notice that most photos tend to elicit some sort of reaction within you.
You either laugh, you could smile, you feel sadness, a sense of empathy or
curiosity. They can make you think about other people you might know or even
look inwardly on yourself. No compositional trick is going to help you
do that. And a lot of the times, the compositions you'll notice in
those photos that really resonate with you aren't anything special. So what should
you do if you feel like you're getting the same old photos every time
you go out and shoot? Well, the first thing you need to do is
to stop forcing yourself to take a photo. This might sound counterintuitive,
but I'm going to explain what I mean by that. When I say forcing
photos, I mean a lot more than just camping out at one spot or
stalking a subject, preferably. Don't stalk a subject. What I mean is
don't force those reflection shots, don't force those framing shots, don't force
those leading line shots. You're only looking at those to sort of use
them as a compositional crutch for what is, at the end of the day,
just an interchangeable subject in a random shot. Following these trends is
just going to lead to you having the same shot to someone else. This
doesn't mean, though, that you should never follow these trends or never use
compositional tools like framing or blurred out foreground. If you see an
interesting subject and there are some leading lines that you could use in
your composition, go use them. That is going to be a better photo for
it. But as long as the subject and the content itself is already worthy
of a photo. A favourite shot of mine from Elliott Erwitt's dogs is a
dog on a surfboard, I believe. And he's almost like framed, like half framed
by a bird flying through the foreground. Look, that photo of the dog on
the surfboard was already good and then those birds coming to the foreground just
made it ten times better. By forcing shots based on what you think the
wider definition of a good photo is, you might just be copying photos that
you've seen before on Instagram, even if you're not doing it intentionally. It
could just be a shot that is subconsciously baked into your mind now.
But instead, what you really need to do is trust your gut, start listening
to intuition and start focusing on what naturally interests you. For each of us,
there's a part of the human experience around us in street photography that
naturally resonates with us. And by stopping paying attention to online trends
and start just focusing on the moments that occur in front of you that
you can't help but lift your camera to take a photo of, that is
going to lead to you taking photos that are important to you, that you
will enjoy looking back on. When you are out taking photos, do your best
not to think. If you see something, shoot. If you see another thing, shoot.
It doesn't matter what it is, just start with that. There's a big difference
in street photography between taking photos from a tourist perspective versus a
street photographer's perspective. A tourist is going to take the same
photos of the same street, of the same landmark, with the same composition,
but a street photographer is going to look for the anomalies and the weird
stuff in the everyday. That's the thing you want to look for. Starting with
trends, starting with tourist photos is a very good way to learn techniques, to
learn the technical side. But if you want to really start finding out what
resonates with you, focus on the little things, the little actions people do, the
little things that play out in front of you. An example of this that
I shot recently was the front of this cafe. I was actually waiting for
the builder to re reveal his butt crack as he had done previously. I
have a thing for builders butt cracks. Apparently. For the moment, I've realised
that I'm looking for people, and specifically people doing weird things.
People who might be positioned weirdly within the environment, people with weird
expressions on their faces and those who are just being funny without even knowing
or trying to be funny. As I started to notice this and actually
reflect on it, I've realised that's something that I enjoy in life anyway.
There's a lot of my favourite people that I've met in my life have
been those who are naturally funny to me without meaning to be for a
second. It's when people are being their authentic selves, but it actually
brightens your day and makes you laugh a little bit, makes you laugh inside.
It's not that you're laughing at them, like pointing down at them and laughing,
it's just that their overall personality, how they conduct themselves, is just quite
light and quite funny from my perspective. There are those people that naturally
brighten my day just through how they act. And I realised in street photography,
looking for those little moments, even if it's kind of like a bit more
satirical, it's actually kind of a sad moment, but it just makes me laugh
a little bit because how it's played out, those are the moments I've started
to notice and I've started to look for and started to take more photos
of. I'm still so at the beginning of shooting street photography in any sort
of serious way, that I'm happy that I've kind of had this sort of
realisation so soon, but I think it's going to be years before this manifests
into anything meaningful. I know you may be new to shooting street photography, and
if you're anything like me, you might have a lot of nerves and anxiety
around shooting people in public. And if you have any of this anxiety, I
recommend you cheque out this video. Here. I put together a list of all
the things that have helped me overcome anxiety in shooting street photography,
and I hope you find it very helpful.