♪ I've been in your waters ♪
("In and Out of Love" by Martin Hall)
♪ One thing's for sure ♪
♪ I've never been so close before ♪
♪ It's one way or the other ♪
♪ I thought you were my love ♪
- Ooh.
That is some good coffee!
What's up everybody, Peter McKinnon here,
and welcome back to another tutorial.
Today we're jammin' on street photography
because it's amazing and I've got some
tips and tricks for you.
Along with Alan, we went shooting.
It was a great time.
We're going to critique some photos,
get you guys out there snapping dope pictures.
But, man, that was a delicious coffee!
It's, watch is on this hand, it's uh,
it's 7:30 in the morning.
I'm getting an early start.
Like, I've been waking up early recently and whoa!
Man, it makes a difference!
The second thing that makes a difference,
this might even be the third, who's counting?
Sound panels.
Sound panels installed.
It should sound like a mint recording studio in here.
Minus the fact that we have a broken window.
So there's still like,
it's like a recording studio with the window cracked.
Maybe because it's a little hot.
Super excited that that problem, the reverb, the echo
should be, voom, eviscerated!
That is a good word: eviscerated.
It's just, it's such a great,
Mm!
It's just everything I'm feeling!
Eviscerated!
It's fun to say, it sounds dramatic, ah.
(rock music)
Hoo, okay, welcome back!
Sorry that there was no two-minute Tuesday this week.
I have a flight to Finland tonight.
I'm speaking at the Future of Online Media festival
in Helsinki tomorrow.
Very excited to go to Finland.
Very sad that Matty won't be there with me,
because he's Finnish.
From Finland.
It would have been fun.
So thanks, Matty, for,
thanks for bailing on me.
No, (chuckling) he didn't bail.
We're going to go into like five or six tips
with regards to street photography,
and how to get great images all the time.
But my biggest tip, the one thing I'm going to start with
I'm going to lead with this is, it's the wild west!
Anything goes.
Street photography is like every type
of photography rolled up into one umbrella.
Okay, so like, kind of like,
I say the same analogy with weddings.
You got product photography.
You got landscape photography.
You got portrait photography.
You have architecture.
You have all of these things in the city.
You're kind of like the photo-journalist.
That's what street photography is to me.
There's no rhyme or reason.
There aren't particularly any rules you need to follow.
I have suggestions on how to get better shots,
and shots like my friends and I do,
if that's something that interests you.
But the biggest thing I will try to convey is that
it is the wild west, anything goes.
You're not doing anything wrong, but take advantage of it.
There are so many stories to be told within street
photography with the people that are on the streets,
and the buildings, and the atmosphere, and the weather,
and all these things we're gonna talk about.
But street photography in and of itself
is just it's own beast.
I want to just preface by saying that it's a ton of fun.
It's one of my favorite things to do
is just to grab a camera and a group of friends
head downtown or head into a new city
and literally just walk around and photograph.
So the other day Alan, Brodie, and myself headed downtown
and we walked 17 kilometers.
We got up at four AM and we hit the streets by five AM.
There was nobody out, we got the sunrise.
It was absolutely incredible, you guys saw the B-roll,
I hope you enjoyed that, we worked very hard on it.
Uh, but let's dive in to some tips
with regards to street photography,
so you can start shooting bangers like these.
(rock music)
Alright, so the first tip I want to talk about is fashion.
So actually having someone that is a little fashion forward
or has somewhat of a fashion sense that you're
shooting with, be that it's a friend, or a model,
or a friend who's a model.
Or just your photographer buddy who happens to be styling.
Which a lot of my friends are.
Having them bring different outfits, different looks,
different attire, that really, really helps when you're
shooting, because you might not want to take fifteen
portraits of Alan in and amongst the city.
Because they all start looking the same.
But with fashion and different outfits you can shoot pants.
You can shoot the outfit itself.
You can shoot kind of that subject
without actually showing their face.
And if you bring those different outfits,
you can roll that over a couple hours and get a whole
bunch of different looks during different times of the day
and different pockets of the city, street,
wherever you are shooting.
That would be something that's very easy to do.
It seems like, really, Pete, that's one of your points?
But, yeah, 100% that's one of my points.
Because it helps a lot.
We did that the other day, but we did it with shoes.
It helped significantly.
So finding someone who's fashion forward, maybe that's you,
maybe that's one of your buddies, maybe that's someone
that you know, a friend's friend, whatever.
Finding someone like that really makes for better photos
in and amongst a street, urban environment.
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy with that.
(upbeat music)
Alright, tip number two sort of falls into the,
a video I did several months back
called Architecture Photography.
Now when it comes to street photography, architecture,
the buildings, those essentially are our mountains.
Those are the mountain-scapes
of the landscape photos, right?
We're gonna use these buildings as backdrops.
We're gonna look up to see these buildings,
to have them draped in the background.
And we've talked about sometimes in urban environments
not forgetting to look up.
Because sometimes the architecture looking up is
as impressive as it is looking forward.
Because people design these buildings with purpose.
So if taking portraits and shooting up to
use those buildings as the background can really yield
dramatic, cinematic looking photos, kind of like these.
And it makes for a really good backdrop, especially
if you're in a street or urban environment.
Another nice thing about using the buildings
is sometimes when you get into a city the buildings
are so high they create their own little, like,
shadow environments, and by that, I mean, it could be the
brightest, most sunny day outside
and you might think to yourself,
ah, it's just, sun's too high,
I can't really shoot right now.
It's like, it's like high noon.
But if the buildings are high enough and you do enough
walking and exploring, those buildings cast their own
shadows and make really, really nice soft light pockets
in and amongst the city.
So you can find really interesting
areas that have great light peaking through.
Or maybe some rays are coming through, there's a sliver
shining from the other building.
You can really find unique stuff by just walking
in and amongst the buildings that are blocking out the sun.
That took me like 10 minutes to say.
(upbeat music)
Alright, point number three: timing.
I've said this time and time again.
Shooting at the right time of day.
We got up at four AM, I was in the city by five.
We had a good clean two hours of shooting uninterrupted,
with incredible light.
There was nobody on the streets.
We could do things that we wouldn't have normally been able
to do during the day, like sit down in the middle
of the street, perfectly center the CN Tower between my
legs, and didn't have to worry about traffic
or getting up to move for cars, or a whole bunch of people
crossing the street, blocking the frame, in and out, and,
you just don't have to worry about that.
You're up before the city has even started its day.
Having that nice morning light, people setting up their
storefront shops, you've got people getting into their cabs,
you've got the people walking to work.
There are so many different things that happen
in the morning that pass you by if you just forgo that.
And the same thing goes for sunset.
(upbeat music
Point number four is using props.
Now in this case, we're using the sneakers.
I've got to address, there's been so many comments
of people saying recently, Pete,
your sneaker game is just fire right now.
Pete's sneaker game is lit.
Pete has really stepped up his sneaker game.
What is happening with Pete's sneaker rotation?
So I teamed up with StockX for this video so I could get
some shoes to make this,
because shoes have a very urban, modern, city, street
photography, gritty kind of feel to them.
They just look good in these environments.
Had I shot these same types of photos in a beautiful
landscape with a serene, calm lake and canoes and
Air Jordan, it just wouldn't have looked as good.
It wouldn't have looked as fitting.
But shoes in an urban setting, street setting, are perfect.
The colors pop with the monochromatic tones
of the city streets and curbs and buildings.
And you've got some bright red Air Jordan's.
Or you contrast that with white Air Jordan's, but you match
those up with a really clean, blue-looking glass to get that
little hit of reflection and the sun coming in just right.
Sneakers and the sneaker culture fit perfectly with street
photography, so when I was thinking about what I wanted
to do for this video and how I wanted to shoot it,
I called up my friend, Holiday, and I was like,
"Hey man, how do I get some sneakers?
"Like what do I, I want to get those Air Jordan's.
"Where do I, can I just go to the shop and buy them?"
And he was like, "No, no.
"That's not how the sneaker game works.
"Those are kind of hard to get.
"But I've got a friend that works at StockX."
So they got on board and they sent me a massive amount
of sneakers, all of these sneakers they sent me, which is
incredible, they sent me all of these sneakers so that I
could take some photos and make a video.
So thank you to StockX for hooking that up.
You guys are amazing!
I'll leave their links below,
if you want to check them out.
I think we're going to give away
some sneakers on my Instagram account as well.
So if you don't follow me, check that link, head over there
and maybe you can win a pair yourself.
But they just fit perfect
for this exact type of photography.
Another thing Alan mentioned was, he likes shooting
sneakers, because sometimes like I mentioned earlier,
he's tired of shooting portraits of the same person
or his friends.
So at least he can pan down
and shoot different sneakers.
So you can just bring a whole bunch of different pairs with
you like I did.
I think I went with like four pairs that day.
And we had four different looks to shoot over four
different spots, got great footage, got great photos
and that's what we want to come away with, good results.
The last thing you want to do is come back from a
photo shoot where you've taken a lot of time to shoot
great images and you come home with nothing.
And that's not to say you can only shoot shoes in a city.
There's lots of other props you can get.
Lens balls are popular, other things.
If you're going to do product photography within a city.
If you're going to shoot your coffee mug.
If you're going to shoot something for another
company, for a brand, city environments really add life,
buzz, electricity to your photos.
And that's what we want.
We don't want that nice cup of coffee or those nice
headphones with perfectly white background.
That's easy, that's fine, that's good for retail.
But if we want a really urban lifestyle shot of those
headphones floating in the air with yellow cabs behind them
and people crossing the street in the financial district,
that's going to tell so much a better story than just
some headphones on your desk.
(upbeat music)
Alright, now point number five is the mood.
Now, yes, we captured sunrise and that's very, like,
feel-good kind of thing to capture.
The nice warm sun coming in on a summer day.
It just makes for feel good photos.
But just because the weather might be bad
doesn't mean you can't go out and shoot.
Because different weather
and different weather environments are going
to create very different moods.
If you've got a storm coming,
those are totally different photos
than when the storm is actually here.
But just because it's bad weather doesn't mean you can't
go and shoot those, because sometimes
those yield the best photos.
And a fun fact is, just before a storm, just before
that storm hits, is when you will get the most incredible
photos of a sky, period.
Woo, look out!
You will get incredible cloud patterns.
The colors will change, it'll get dark from light.
That's when you want to capture the sky.
And then when that storm's happening,
that's a totally different look.
And when the storm's over, again, a totally different look.
And the different types of life that comes out
during a storm,
ie. maybe people are running with umbrellas now.
Maybe people are trying to get into cabs, they're holding
newspapers over their heads.
Maybe they're trying to cover their carts
from some street vending activity that was happening,
and those are all things you can capture.
People walking over the curb and splashing into puddles.
Looking for reflections, when everything's wet,
everything looks way more cinematic.
So just because it's gonna be bad weather,
or maybe it's going to rain that day,
it doesn't mean you can't shoot.
And those are totally different moods.
So I say all of these things to you guys,
this is my experience shooting street photography.
It's not the definitive.
It's not the be all, end all.
This is not the final word.
These are just my suggestions, my takeaways.
Shooting with friends like Alan, who are very
experienced street and urban photographers.
And for those of you that follow Alan,
you'll know he's extremely talented
at capturing different tones and moods.
And, side note, if you don't follow Alan Palander
on Instagram, you're missing out big time.
He's a phenomenal Toronto photographer.
I'll leave his links below.
You guys should get on board.
He's a member of the dope squad and we support our own.
But a perfect example
of being able to capture so much life and tell such
great stories from a single frame.
That's what we are.
We're storytellers.
Be that you, you want to accept that or not.
Now there could be some folks who just say,
Pete, this is like, this is,
you're just diving way too deep.
Like, I just want to go take photos.
Like, I don't care about telling a story.
And that's totally fine, too.
But don't you want the best possible images that you can
possibly capture?
The feeling of getting home and seeing
something that you created from nothing.
To be proud of that piece of work.
There's no better feeling.
So thank you so much for watching this video.
I hope you got something out of it.
The best advice I can say
is grab some friends, grab your cameras, go down to
a city, go into a street environment, no holds barred
the wild west, keep some of these things in mind
and shoot all day.
Get up early, go to bed late.
See what you can yield.
Tag me in those street photos.
Because it's one of my favorite,
favorite types of photography.
So hit that like button if you like this video.
Smash it, if that's something that you're into.
Subscribe if you aren't already.
And, and I will see you guys when I get back from Finland.
Okay, bye.
(upbeat music)