Street Photography

This week I want to talk about a subject that probably makes many of you nervous, Street Photography. Many new photographers cringe at the thought of shooting street, but if you are a photography student, then I am sure you have had a professor or three tell you that you need to learn to start shooting outside your comfort zone.

College student taking a catnap on the steps in Centennial Olympic Park downtown ATL

 Street Photography doesn’t have to be scary and there are some tips I am going to share with you this week to hopefully make you more successful at it. The key to doing Street Photography is being discreet. You don’t want to be out there with your biggest telephoto lens, trying to avoid human contact because you will make your subjects nervous. Take your camera body and a prime lens like a 35mm or 50mm, these lenses will require you to get more up close and personal, but that is the whole idea. Don’t take a flash with you or anything else that will be intrusive or invasive to your subjects, for Street Photography you want to be a minimalist.

Woman walking and texting on her way to bus stop

 Mirrorless is a good camera to use for Street Photography as most of these models are extremely small and light weight, yet make amazing images. Get up close to your subjects and interact with them, talk to them, get a little bit of their story, build some rapport and you will find that Street Photography is not so hard to pull off.

If you are someone like myself who is fairly sociable to begin with and can build an instant rapport with people, then Street Photography will be easier for you. If you don’t have this natural knack, then take it slowly and don’t try to force the issue with your subject. Be respectful of them and their personal space, you don’t want to drastically interfere with their routine or whatever they are doing, but you do need to interact with them enough to make this process easier. Talk to them about the weather, the local sports team, how terrible the traffic is (especially if you live in Atlanta), or anything else that strikes your fancy. Stay away from HOT topics like politics or religion, I don’t want you getting into a hostile debate or getting attacked by some nut.

As you get more and more experienced at shooting Street Photography and become more comfortable, you may find that you really enjoy shooting it. I know I did during the last two years I worked in downtown Atlanta. Also when you become more confident, some people will actually approach you and ask to be shot as part of whatever you are shooting for, I have had this happen numerous times and it can be a lot of fun!

Rodney here is one of the many people that have stopped me and asked to pose for a street portrait

 The important things I want you take away from this week’s blog post is that Street Photography doesn’t need to be scary. If you keep your gear to the bare minimum and take the time to talk to your subjects you will find that this style of photography is not nearly as frightening as you originally thought.

Comments/Questions

Understanding Aperture

There are three key components of the “exposure triangle”, Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed, and today we will be talking about Aperture.

An easy way to think of the Aperture of your lens is to think in terms of the human eye. Since your camera’s sensor “sees” things much as your eye does and then records those images in a physical form, we can think of Aperture the same way.

Every lens is made of a a group of glass elements and also a group of Aperture blades. The blades are what limits the amount of light passing into the lens and onto your sensor. These mechanical blades work the same way your pupil works, when in a low light situation, your pupils open up larger to allow more light in so that you can see better and when you are out in bright sunlight, they shrink down to tiny dots to reduce the amount of light coming in.

My Canon EF 50mm F/1.4 USM wide open at F/1.4

Aperture blades do the exact same thing, only mechanically and you control them. So a wide Aperture lens like my Canon EF 50mm F/1.4 USM when set at 1.4 is wide open, like your pupil is in low light and I can shoot better indoors at say a concert.

When I am shooting outdoors in sunlight, I will generally set my Aperture to say F/5.6 to F/8 and the blade will reduce the size of the hole in the center of my lens allowing less light into my sensor like the image below of the Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 II. The process of engaging the blades in your lens is known as stopping down as you are reducing the amount of light getting through the lens to your sensor.

Stock image of Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 II with the blades closed all the way

 Aperture is measured in stops and you will see it marked on your lens in the following values. Let’s say you have a standard kit lens of 18-55mm. That lens generally has an Aperture of F/3.5-F/5.6, which means at 18mm it can open as wide as F/3.5 but at 55mm it can only open to a width of F/5.6.

If you are looking at the popular 70-200mm lenses, they generally come in two varieties, F/2.8 and F/4. The F/2.8 model will allow more light, in this case one stop more, than it’s F/4 counterpart.

Aperture also directly impacts your Depth of Field in your images, especially in longer focal length lenses. We all strive to achieve that creamy background blur and bokeh, and using a low Aperture with a longer focal length lens is how that is accomplished. This is one of the reasons wedding photographers will generally shoot with the 135mm F/2 or the 70-200mm F/2.8 lenses. How your bokeh looks in your images depends on how many blades your lens has. A five blade lens will not be able to make perfect circles, but then again, some people like their bokeh to be more angular, where I prefer mine to be as close to perfectly rounds balls of light. When shooting landscapes, by stepping down the Aperture, you can keep more of the scene in focus and get that beautiful wide shot where everything looks fantastic!

Notice the creamy Bokeh in this shot I took in Monroe, Ga.

 Another thing to keep in mind is that every lens has a “Sweet Spot”, which means the Aperture at which the lens shoots at it’s sharpest. You will need to test your lenses for yourself to find that “Sweet Spot” area, but on most lenses, it’s the area between F/5.6 and F/9.

Janice Mcgregor shot this one with the Canon EF 28-135mm check out that blurry background!

 Understanding Aperture is crucial to become a successful photographer and once you master this aspect of your lenses you will becomes more skilled and intuitive at fine tuning your photography.



Comments/Questions