On Street Photography

jbuhler.com / On Street Photography

A while ago I wrote these very simple comments on taking pictures in the street. Four years later, I am surprised at how many people read them. I still get comments and questions, and have seen other's blogs talk about them.

Still, after four years, there isn't much I can add. Just that if you go out and take pictures, this is going to be your experience and these are going to be your first thoughts.

(December 2004)

Taking pictures of people in the street is hard. If you are shy, getting close to strangers and snapping a camera in their faces is probably not what your idea of a Saturday afternoon is.

I'm shy.

Yet, images with people are among the ones that interest me the most. Observing people in the street, and sometimes interacting with them is great. My favorite photographers are Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Lee Friedlander. Peter Turnley's "Parisians" is excellent too, full with the pictures I'd like to be able to make.

John Brownlow and others insist that people in the street usually don't pay attention to being photographed, and that usually a smile or other subtle gesture are enough to get their permission. This has been my limited experience too, but I still have to make a conscious effort to take someone's picture on the street.

When you start trying your luck at street photography, you go through a number of stages:

Too Far

It's hard to get close at the beginning, so your pictures are bound to have a lot of far away people:

Wrong Side

You start getting closer, but you're still too shy. Sometimes you see something, but you react too slowly. Sometimes you make yourself think that that composition of someone's back can be good. This is usually not true:

Too Bland

At some point, you'll be brave enough to fire the shutter while being close to the front of someone. The initial excitement caused by this is rapidly dissipated by the realization that being close and in the right side is not good enough: you want your subjects to be doing something, or have an interesting expression, or the composition to make the picture. Most times none of this happens:

Sometimes though, you get lucky, and get pictures that work:

After a couple of years, I keep getting a combination of all these four kinds of images, with the good ones being the scarcest, and the bland kind being the most common.

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