Street Photography: Learn how to become a better street photographer

Learning how to become a better street photographer is something I’ve thought a lot about lately. Luckily for you and me, there is a crazy amount of free information online, in books, audiobooks, PDFs and on Youtube.

This is a little showcase of some of my street photography.

The two cameras I use and adore are Fujifilm x100f and Ricoh GR II. Both of them are exceptional cameras for street photography.

 

See all my photographs shot with my two favorite cameras for street photography: Fuji x100f and the Ricoh GR II Digital.

While I think tips and tricks can help you, I really believe practice on the street and reading is the only way to get better. See the list of photography books I recommend. I’m not a big fan of photography courses and workshops – for sure they work if the teacher is good, but they are often very expensive and I believe we can teach ourselves a lot! 

Also, a friend of mine filmed me doing a street photography tutorial in Mexico and I actually do think watching someone else on the street can help you.

Video: Watch me doing Street Photography in Mexico City.

And it’s important for me to note, that I’m not a professional photographer. I’m a beginner, who is learning how to improve my photography every day – That’s why I started my 365 days of street photography project.

Basic Street Photography 101 for beginners

Start. Just start. If you already started doing it – continue to do it. And keep doing it.

You don’t need a crazy expensive camera to do great street photography. It helps to have a great camera and if you are on the look for a great camera for street photography, I’d recommend Ricoh GR II or Fujifilm x100f I own both of them and It feels like they are made for street photography – I’m extremely happy with both of them. If you want, you can take a look at the camera settings I use for street photography.

Composition, Framing & Angles

In street photography, you have a lot of liberty to freestyle it. And there aren’t really many rules. That said, to make a really good street photo, it helps to understand the basics of composition, angles, and know how to frame a photo.

It’s a really good idea to think about framing – adjust your composition – take the same photo from different angles, and look for triangles, isolate objects, play with foreground and background.

 

How to edit your photos

When I edit my street photos I use Adobe LightRoom. If you have seen my photos, you’d know that I don’t use a large amount of time on editing. A great photo usually doesn’t need much editing, so I would rather focus on taking better photos, than getting better at fixing a bad photo.

 

Exposure: ISO, Aperture & Shutter Speed

The exposure triangle. It’s one of the more complicated things to wrap your head around when getting into street photography or photography in general. But there is a reason why everyone talks about – it’s what makes or break a photo. For a beginner, and what I did myself when I started taking photos, was to put my camera to the “p” mode, which means you only control the ISO – the camera will take care of everything else. Today, I still shoot 80% of my photos using the cameras P mode.