Street Photography Tips: Transform Everyday Scenes into Art
The more I use the street as the place to find creative outlet, the more I see it as a theatre. The world stage, it’s actors, each with a role to play.
I have always had a contention with photographers who turn their thoughts to street photography, then declare that it must have certain qualities. Normally, those qualities are the photographer’s own biased opinion. They suit themselves, and expect others to immediately agree.
“It must be a street portrait!” — “It must be real close up — so you can see up people’s noses, hairs ‘n all!”
Often, after they declare what street photography is, they ask what the ‘proper camera settings for street photography are’.
Transform Everyday Scenes into Art
I love to create. A street photo should have everything that you see in it. The point is that you must earn your salt by making something interesting out of the mundane, the everyday life of hum-drum affairs that pass us by on the street.
As far as I know, a photo must be interesting to look at; if it has a certain quality, a little like magic, that makes a person stop, draw breath, and gaze deeply into the photo, then it’s a good photo.
I have photos of my cats that make people stop, gaze, sigh, and become mesmerized by the hypnotic eyes of my cat Hitchcock.
Photos cause people to feel emotions.
Close up street photography, portrait on the street — stranger’s portraits— cats, dogs, workers in bright skirts, and men dressed like Gordon Gekko, silk ties like flowers, shirts crisp white, winter tans and red stilettos. All make the world a stage.
Flat light in winter is a fact of life, and we must learn to think deeply enough to see between the cracks, the clouds, and the subtle light changes that offer us material for a street shot.
Sunshine is a beautiful luxury that creates a stage of dancing light and shadows.
Flat light is a challenging time of learning.
When we take time to stop and look, practise seeing properly, and let the world shift its feet along the street as we wait on a busy corner, we’ll begin to see things that are not immediately apparent.
I often feel that Magic Realism, the art form that depicts strange and weird changes in reality, especially in perspectives, often subtle, is based on reality as we know it; some of us, the greats and the nobodies, allow our thoughts to become seduced by the flickering shadow and light.
Splashes of sunshine that slide across a face, shadows that creep along the street and leave brick textures bare — clean poetry before our eyes — reds, yellows, pastel tones, rosy cheeks mixed with baubles of sweat, a weathered wooden door with stories to tell.
If we spend time going back to the same places, always full of intention, we will begin to see things that didn’t seem to be there before. The world is complex. The street is a highly furnished stage, sometimes, the velvet curtains close, then later sweep open again; same place, same time, different day different stage setting. We see things differently because something changed.
The people are different, the colours, and the pallor of faces changed a notch up or down the scale of grey tones. Your feet have moved three yards to the right, and everything looks different. It’s time and opportunity to create a new photo from the same materials.
The shift in perspective caused magic to happen. People look different, your mind is now captured by light. A fifteen-minute tango has begun, and you should know your steps; set the camera to F-Stop Magic Realism, and check your ISO is ready to capture every nuance of changing light.
Your street photography time on the street should be like a lover’s dance with time and space. A magical sweeping of light that fills your mind with ideas that take you up to the clouds. To feel the surge of joy. To forget all else and throw yourself into the stage of life with all its colours and movements, and magical moments unexplained.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.
My Street Photography Book; Berlin — The Fine Art of Street Photography
Leave a comment if you feel so moved, or would like to say something about your cat.
