TAKE TO THE STREE TS I’m thinking about trying street photography, but it makes me nervous. Can you give me some tips on how to overcome my apprehension?
about doing street photography is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, Joseph. In fact, I’d say it was perfectly normal to have some apprehension about it, and the fact that you do will hold you in good stead, because it will keep you alert.
I’ve taken a lot of street images over the years, but I still have a few butterflies when I get out the camera and start snapping. But I’m still here, none the worse for it, so the thought of doing it is almost certainly scarier than the actual process of doing it.
I’d suggest you start somewhere really busy and full of tourists where it’s almost the norm to see camera-toting people pointing their cameras all over the place. For example, you could try the South Bank on the River Thames in London on a typical Saturday for all manner of people and street An LCD on a camera is the liquid crystal display positioned on the rear of the camera. It serves many purposes, including helping you to compose the image, reviewing an image that has been taken, and displaying options within the camera’s menu system. No. Different cameras have different sizes of LCD and varying resolutions. Obviously, the better the resolution of the LCD on your camera, the better the quality of the displayed image. Some LCDs (particularly on SLRs) are fixed, while others tilt and swivel on a hinge, enabling you to take photographs from unusual positions, such as overhead or on the ground. Some LCDs are also touchscreens, allowing you to take a picture or change a setting by fingertip control on the LCD itself. LCDs have become larger over the last few years, and their screen resolution has also improved a great deal. performers. If you can’t get to London, try another popular tourist destination, like York, Edinburgh or Cambridge.
You should also use a longer focal length such as 200mm to start with, so you can sit or stand somewhere quietly and just pick off pictures of people coming and going on the street without them noticing you. As a general rule, people are busy going about their business so they are unaware of being photographed unless you attempt a Bruce Gilden-style approach. Bruce is an American photographer who snaps people in New York with a wide-angle lens and a flashgun, literally jumping in front of them to get his shot. At this stage, I think you should avoid this approach!
One option I like to do is pick an interesting background, stand back from it, and then frame up a shot that will work Many digital compacts and mirrorless compacts don’t actually have a viewfinder, so you have to use the LCD for framing your images. There are pros and cons to their use for composing images. On the plus side, they allow extra creativity, allowing you to hold the camera higher or lower for a different viewpoint, but on the negative side they can sometimes be difficult to see in really bright conditions. An LCD will also show you 100% of the image you’ve taken or are intending to take, whereas a viewfinder usually crops a small amount of the scene at the edges. An LCD preview of an image will give you a reasonably accurate display, but it’s not something you should trust. For an accurate assessment of an exposure, look at the histogram, also shown via the LCD. This will show whether the image has been clipped in either the shadows or highlights.
Yes, you can adjust the brightness of the when somebody interesting walks through. When I see someone approaching, I have the camera up to the eye, ready for them to walk into the frame. Usually, people never notice they’ve been photographed, or they apologise for getting in the shot! I’ve also been known to stand pointing the camera down into a puddle. This rarely raises suspicion, except about my sanity. When you aren’t pointing a camera directly at them, people don’t realise that they are your subject. LCD to make it either brighter or darker. The amount you can adjust it depends on the model you have. Some cameras also have an auto setting to allow the camera to set the brightness according to conditions.