Street Photography

For one of my last assignments for a photography course I took, I did street photography. Street photography is when you go into, you guessed it, the streets and take pictures of the everyday happenings. The nice thing about street photography is that it is largely outside; the natural light will allow high shutter speeds even in a point and shoot camera. I was working on catching the decisive moment and framing. The decisive moment, a term coined by Henri-Cartier-Bresson, is that one moment that will never happen in the same way again. The second half of my goal was framing up shots and letting people walk into them. Here's a few examples of the style I was trying to emulate:

Henri Cartier-Bresson. France. 1932

Trolley-New Orleans. Robert Frank. 1955

Here's the photos that I took:

It was a very interesting experience. I brought my sister along with me for moral support, as it was a little bit intimidating to walk around snapping pictures of strangers. There's a certain finesse to doing street photography without being creepy. Most people were fine with the camera, especially once you've hung around a spot for a few minutes, but I did have one semi-scary looking guy ask me if I had taken his picture. I hadn't, so I just said no and kept walking. It was a bit jarring, but I recovered quickly and kept shooting. I learned that it's important to pick up on visual cues (backs turned, funny looks etc.) that people don't want there picture taken.

I'm not sure if I have that finesse and comfort quite down pat yet. I did a lot of shooting from the hip, without putting the view finder up to my eye, which comes off less creepy, but you pay for it with the quality of your shots -blurry, missed subjects, etc. The solution to this, I found, was shooting with the widest angle you've got. I started out using my 50mm, but then I switched over to my Lensbaby fisheye and had much better luck with getting my desired subject in the shot. By the end of my walk, I felt much more at ease, and I'm excited to try this technique again. 

Have you done any street photography? Do you like the candid style or do you prefer posed pictures? Let me know in the comments.