We could have a problem with street photography trends. They could be turning
our cameras from unique creative tools into just a bunch of broken photocopiers.
And you could be forgiven for thinking that today there is a massive repetition
in street photography trends, in tutorials that stop us from really doing something
different. So the first thing I want to do is just pretend
Let's pretend you've just stumbled into the street photography online space.
You're met with reflection shots and low angled mobile phone, wide lens shots, and
also portraits with just the tip of the nose of the subject in focus.
And these examples could lead to you thinking one of two things that could
be one, OOH, I want to get in on some of that action. Or
two, eh, not really for me. But if we dig a little bit deeper,
or maybe actually a lot deeper, you'll realise that this that you've just found
on the surface is just the tip of the street photography iceberg. For
nearly 100 years, street photography has covered the world in documentary,
portraiture, fine art, subgenre upon subgenre. So it can be a little
bit disheartening to see street photography trends as they are today,
narrowing the focus of this incredibly broad genre of photography down to really
just a handful of things. And personally, I feel like these trends are actually
pigeonholing the very genre of photography they're trying to promote, although this
probably wasn't the intention. And there is an argument that it's kind of
like the gateway into the genre. This can be discouraging for newcomers who feel
like in order to partake, they have to replicate what these trends are
demonstrating. Like music. Photography has a breadth of genres that you can
get involved in. You can be, say, into hip hop in terms of music,
and then you get into jazz, and then maybe you swap to rock for
some reason. Same with photography. You can get in through weddings, do a
bit of landscapes, move to a city and start shooting street. And then you
go on TikTok and you start shooting street portraits because people on TikTok
do that. And then you go on the street and you start shooting, like,
off camera, flash, up close portraits of people like Bruce Gilden. And then you
go back on TikTok and you start shooting, like, low angle reflection shots
of a car in a puddle. And then you put on a teal and
orange preset because that's the way photography was intended to be. Or maybe
not. While I don't think there's anyone particularly to blame for this, something
does come to mind. I think something I've learned during my 20s is that
you see a lot of your friends going in to become school teachers and
just how real and relatable they are, and how when you're a student, they
seem so much bigger and more responsible. But as you're an adult and you
see your friends become those teachers. You realise that teachers are only really
one or two lessons ahead of the students that they're teaching. And this
margin between a student and a teacher becomes even smaller. When you are someone
that teaches photography and street photography on the Internet, it goes
without saying that there are limitless things you can teach within photography
and street photography. But that limitless amount of things that you can teach
gets shrunk down really, really small into what you can really demonstrate visually
on the internet in an engaging short video. Especially when you want it to
be appealing to people from all over the world with visual learning and a
quick win at the end of following that video. Although I wish this wasn't
the case. Not all street photography can be taught through video. It just can't.
Some of it is such off chance moments, it's very difficult to
demonstrate to someone. And that's why street photography trends rely on
stationary subjects or repeatable scenarios that they can do day after
day to create more content. I touched on this point in a recent video
where I talked about a lot of these shots looking the same and you
see it all over Instagram. These easy tutorials aren't always stationary like
architectural subjects. Sometimes they're street portraits. I'm not interested in
street portraits and I never really have been. But you can see that a
lot of newcomers are really seeing this trend and thinking that's what it means
to be a street photographer, I should do that. And I made a very
similar mistake. At one point I tried making a handful of street photography POV
videos and it actually made me not enjoy shooting street photography. Going
out with a camera on your chest at the same time as trying to
get candid shots just felt a little bit more like I'm performing for the
camera versus I'm actually trying to pursue street photography and express
myself creatively. It feels very much like you're only taking photos for the sake
of creating content as a byproduct with each of the methods that you pick
up in street photography trends. At the moment when these methods of photography
become popular, they actually become kind of like the default perception of high
quality street photography compared to everything else. This is far from the
fault of those who are actually making these videos. They're making content
around something they're interested in and typically they're going to make the
content that one gets watched and two is easy to repeat because, especially in
short form, video quantity over quality is the name of the game. This is
no hate to them whatsoever. This is kind of just the digital environment that
they're playing in. I'd like to share a great piece of advice from Garyvee
and it's actually about advice itself, and that is pay attention to the person
that is giving you the advice. I find that this resonates in pretty much
every aspect of life for your personal life, your work, your hobbies, your
creativity, whatever it might be. Especially when looking at people online,
myself included right now, looking at creators online, take everything they say
with a pinch of salt because they're creating content. And while they might
have the best intentions on making content, they can't really perceive how
potentially millions of people will receive their content and transform the
information that they gave them into actions in real life. So instead of
learning from creators who are just sharing tips online, instead go to study
the work of the greats themselves. There are countless examples of great
photography from the last hundred years for us to learn from, and not
only from the past, you need to take into account everyone that's
currently producing work today that you can learn from too. A great video
series I stumbled across a few months ago is from Paulie B and it
is his walkie talkie series in which he follows around different New York City
photographers as they just walk the streets. Very bare bones video, I think
it's just shot on the phone and they just talk about how long they've
been shooting, what they shoot with and what they're trying to shoot. And it's
very rarely about settings, it's very rarely about lenses. A lot of the
time they're just going out shooting film and just trying to capture different
people in New York and they talk a little bit about their projects, their
history of photography. And it's probably one of the best places to learn
from people without actively going out and meeting other photographers. Which also
you definitely should try do that too. Maybe shooting candid street photography
isn't really your thing, and maybe you're interested in shooting kind of the shapes
that are created by hard light in the city centre. And to be honest,
I like some of that too. And that doesn't mean that you have to
suddenly go, oh, this isn't street photography. I should shoot people, I
should shoot street portraits. Shoot whatever you want. And if that's the
kind of thing that you like making, you could build a body of work
of cool light geometry and then put on an exhibition of it. There's all
different kinds of street photography and it doesn't mean that because one thing
is popular or one style is popular right now, that that's what you should
do. Really. You just want to go out as much as possible and really
be introspective on why you shot what you shot. Do you like doing it?
What naturally makes you want to lift up the camera, just focus on putting
in the reps and you'll soon find your own voice. This is coming from
someone who is still trying to figure out what he's doing. But so far
this kind of thing has been helpful. The lack of limitations with digital
photography can sometimes actually hinder your creativity rather than enable it. We
almost have too many options and we don't have a ceiling to work against
in order to be able to express ourselves. So what can we actually do
about this to improve the situation? Never, ever limit your horizons in terms
of the photography that you might want to try out. Just because you got
into photography through landscapes doesn't mean you have to stick with
landscapes. Same goes with weddings or street. If you want to hop around
between different genres, play around. You'll learn something from each one that
you'll apply to your new work in the next one. And on the flip
side, from not limiting the genres that you experiment with, try from time to
time limiting the technology that you shoot with. When we take away zoom
lenses, take away autofocus, and take away massive memory cards, we're left with very
little to experiment with. An easy trial you can do is to get started
with a film camera. You don't have to spend very much. You can get
like a fixed lens, old range finder thing like Canon Canonet or something
like that. Get a roll of black and white film and just go and
shoot all 36 exposures on that roll of black and white. Limiting yourself to
one focal length, limiting yourself to manual focus, and limiting yourself to
only 36 shots and knowing each one is going to cost you, like up
to a pound or a dollar to be able to shoot and develop. Knowing
all of this puts a bit of pressure on what you actually want to
spend your time shooting, rather than just going out and spraying and praying, coming
back with 500 images and maybe posting two to the gramme. Instead, try and
be really careful with what you're shooting. This can get you to think
more creatively. And for me personally, it's also caused me to be a
bit more engaged with the street around me, rather than just being like an
observer. And that feeling of heft with each photo becomes even more increased
when you get the scans back and you remember the specific shot. Sometimes
you might shoot a roll over like two, three weeks and a shot from
that first week. When you finally get it scanned on the third week, you
look back at it and go, oh my God, that's even better than I
thought it was going to be, and that sort of thing. I feel like
with digital, just it doesn't happen that often. I really wish it did, but
there's something about the preciousness of the choice when you choose to
shoot on film that will definitely push you in terms of when you shoot
digital next. I found myself personally wanting to interact with the world a
bit more when I'm shooting on film, because I know I only have so
many shots and wouldn't I like to get the best shot. So there's been
a couple of times chatting to people, just getting people's attention to be able
to get a photo, and it makes you be a bit more like, look,
I'm only going to take this shot once. I can't burst mode it and
see what I get. I want to get this shot, I'm going to either
interact with the person or get a bit closer, whatever it might be. And
it really pushes you to be like, I see a shot, I need to
move in or interact with a person in order to get the shot that
I want. It's a shame, really, because we pay a lot for digital cameras
that have high burst mode shooting, and those really are only good for sports
and wildlife. And apart from that, they actually might be damaging the way that
we shoot. When you only have one shot and it costs money per frame,
I feel like you really do start to discipline yourself in terms of getting
things right in camera and getting the right moment that you'll want to remember.
A lot of what I've been learning in street photography in the last few
months has not come from cameras or settings. Instead, it's actually come from
how I interact with the world and maybe stripping back my kit to make
it a bit easier to do. And one of those things is learning how
to zone focus on manual lenses. This allows you to free up any thinking
about autofocus and sometimes framing a little bit and just get down to
shooting what you're interested in.