Street Photography

Street photography is the documentation of daily life and put a mirror of present world’s situation. No retake, no manipulation is possible if it is really a street photography. So, we can say it is a straight photography of the current situation without any rehearsal, makeup and artificial lights.

So, if you’re controlling any of the elements in the scene, then it starts to become a conceptual or even outdoor studio shoot – posed models in public definitely do not count as street photography: the photographer knew (or should have known) exactly what poses, look and lighting he wanted before beginning the shoot. (You certainly wouldn’t hire a model and get shooting permission if you had no intention to shoot there, would you?) There is also a reactive element to it – spontaneity and the ability to anticipate are both critical tools for the street photographer. You really never know what you’re going to get on any given day, and that’s what draws photographers to the genre: a never-ending source of material.

Human scale

It is with or without people. This is a question of scale; at the near or human scale, you have that which is dominated by people as the primary subject; at the large scale you have entire cityscapes and street scenes, that use people to give context and scale to the image. The farther away you go, the more the image becomes about the atmosphere and the feeling of the place, rather than the people who inhabit it. That said, there is no reason why you cannot take photos of something which you happen to see while walking around looking for these scenes or people; this is the kind of thing which I like to call ‘street furniture’ – interesting lampposts, mail boxes and other geometries are also fair game.

I think it is also possible to make an argument to include casual architecture in the genre; I know that when I travel, I tend to shoot a lot of interesting buildings with or without human context involved – simply because these are things I see while walking around, and they add a lot to the context and general feel of a place.
So, I must say that street photography is the mirror of the moment and report in the form of frame.

Thank you Pexel for freely sharing these photographs. Thank you Joao Cabral, Francesco Lick and Pixabay for these class photos.