what street photography means to me.

What is street photography?

Street photography is a form of photography that usually features images of people in candid situations within the realms of public places, and despite the name of this style of photography, it does not necessarily need to be in the street. It could be in a taxi, bus, train or even a public building. The street literally just means a place in which human activity can be seen and a place where human interaction can be captured. This could be as simple as two people walking beside one another to a teddy bear left behind on the side of the road. 

What i believe about street photography

I believe that the key aspect you will need to be a street photographer is timing. Timing 

is ultimately everything.

Street photography is like living in the moment. You have to walk about and take photo's of things around you purely on instinct, without thought. 

There will be times where there will be something amazing happening and if you haven't got your camera there and ready you will miss it and this will be really frustrating, you need to be on the ball all the time. Constantly looking and observing your surroundings so that the majority of those moments will not be missed. 

The timing you have when taking a photo can be the decider between whether you capture that moment or not. You could press the shutter at the exact moment the event happens which would be ideal or you could capture the moment before or just after, again this will be very frustrating.

Similar Genres

It has been known that street photography and documentary photography have been compared and are both very similar. The obvious difference being that in street photography you are purely doing it for the purpose of documenting whereas in documentary photography you are doing it to record history and historical events. 

Street photography was at its peak in the 19th century, although many did not know they were street photographers at the time. The majority of people thought they were documenting history (documentary photographer), but in actual fact they were taking candid shots in the street.

Examples of street photography

I've collected some images just to show as an example, I typed 'street photography' into Google images to see what it would come up with and I tried to get three very different images to analyse before I went onto researching photographers.

Image one:

I chose this image because I really liked the way there is a man really close to the lens. Maybe as close as 30 cm away who is blurred, yet there is a women in the background who is almost perfectly in focus. I though it was a really good use of focus in the image.

Image two:

I chose this image because it was completely different to the first image. As street photography is mainly people in a street or a public place its refreshing to see a form of street photography that has an aspect of human life, (in this case the bike) but showing no actual people, I feel its a different way of looking at street photography. Furthermore, I like how the background has a graffiti feel to it, as this is also showing human life without having people in the shot.

Image three:

This is the last image I chose for my blog post. I thought the image was really interesting because you didn't know why this woman had a hoover. Whether she bought it just now or whether she was dropping it off at a friends house or any other scenario you could think of. 

Another thing I liked was how it was in color and how the photographer uses it. Whether the photographer realised it at the time or after or not at all, I think it's really good how the woman instantly stands out. This is because her surroundings are bland only containing browns, blacks and grey's but she has a bag that is bright red and also the hoover is bright red. I think this makes your eyes immediately draw into the center of the image where she is walking.