Street photography

A subject close to my heart. I've been out there doing 'street photography' for donkeys years.

What is it? Ah, that's rather an issue. Everybody has a different definition. I can only give my personal view. And that is: street photography is a genre of photography carried out in urban environments, that captures the flavour of a particular locality at a particular time. It may or may not include people, but usually does. It relishes the grime, the dirt, the litter, of a busy place, and doesn't mind ugliness and beauty rubbing against each other. It generally captures a mood, conveys a message, and makes some kind of comment - celebratory, ironic, wry or weary - on the state of society.

Street photography also tends to be voyeuristic or subversive, the subject being vaguely improper or shameful or even lewd, so that the resulting shot might irritate the city's tourist department.

Street photography often requires the photographer to be a bit sneaky and deceitful, and probably hard-nosed, courageous and intrusive, in order to get a shot of something that ordinary, timid, reasonable people wouldn't be bold enough to attempt.

Putting that another way, if the shot does includes people, then the street photographer may try to get in close and take the picture without their being aware of it. That takes a certain skill, and is clearly risky. Alternatively, the photographer may try to create a situation - the aim being to catch the moment of awareness when the subject has just realised they are being photographed close up, so that their expression is still natural but breaking into something else. It can turn the picture into a cliff-hanger. What happened next? Did the photographer get bad-mouthed? Or punched? Or was it possible to coolly turn around and walk away? Some real, gutsy street photographers specialise in deliberate confrontation in order to get a picture with that something extra to it. Not me! It must take nerves of steel.

Street photography relies on chance. It's quite different from what the paparazzi do. There's no staking-out a celebrity, hanging around for hours with a big heavy camera and a very long lens. A street photographer works by walking about, shooting whatever comes into view, and with a small, light camera that can be easily concealed.

I'm enthusiastic about street photography, and have been for a very long time. In a way, it's the easiest possible thing to do. You simply need a camera, preset to take a standard photo at a standard distance, and then you wander around taking pictures as the scene prompts you, quickly and quietly, not pausing to focus or make adjustments. The results may or may not be sharp and correctly-exposed, but they can usually be worked on to yield an interesting picture. Certainly you can end up with a range of shots that will adorn your Flickr pages. Occasionally you get one you might want to print out and frame.

In this post I want to explore what can be done. I'll begin by giving examples of what is not street photography, but something else.

I've already said that it's urban photography, and that has to mean taking pictures in cities and big towns. You can't do proper 'street photography' in a country village. It will lack the atmosphere, the crowds, the traffic, and the background buzz of a big, busy place. Nor will you encounter the type of person who naturally gravitates to the city, and hates the countryside.

A street photographer needs to keep moving, and not only to find fresh pictures around the next corner. He or she must move because standing still is not an option: the press of traffic and passers-by do not allow it. So quiet, leisurely, contemplative shots, meticulously composed, are not street photography. It's done on the hoof.

Back in 2002, I was on Brighton beach, witnessing the destruction of the old West Pier in a heavy sea. I got some decent shots of it, complete with people:

But it was mere reportage. It wasn't street photography.

Sticking with Brighton, nor were these shots.

The above may epitomise what Brighton looks like, and what you can find there, but they are not 'street' shots. They are just nice pictures. They say nothing about what it feels like to be alive and kicking in Brighton.

I think you must definitely have people in the picture, or some allusion to them. So this isn't a street photograph, even though it was taken in a street:

But this is a street photograph:

I suppose the difference is that a static dummy, unless dressed in a way that says something about the city at that time, is just a dummy. But passers-by in the North Laine, combined with a bike and a coffee shop, convey a sense of city life. As do these other Brighton (and Hove) shots.

What about people indoors? Not just in a sandwich bar immediately off the street, but deep inside some building? As in these shots? 

I speak very personally, but I don't think this is 'street photography'. These pictures were not caught in passing, on the hoof. There was time to consider the composition, the best angle, even to ask the subject to pose. No, the sense of discovery, the walk-by immediacy, the possible risks of a close encounter: all were absent. Everyone there was a sitting duck, not a moving target. 

In this country London is of course the city for street photography. I have a few shots from yesteryear that still seem OK. 

Edinburgh is just as fertile for street photography.

That last shot, is it a 'street photograph'? Well, Deacon Brodie is undeniably an 'Edinburgh' character, and this dummy is almost alive! So, yes. I'd certainly agree that any street art or artifact that is specific to an urban place can be the subject of street photography. So, for instance, these murals and advertisements in the side streets, back alleys, and phone boxes of Brighton and Hove.

And even though they are more generic, and might be found in any city - not only Brighton - these other murals might also qualify as subjects.

I don't however want to be dogmatic about what does, and does not, count as 'street photography'. It's simply whatever you can find while walking or riding around an urban landscape full of people and people-related things. There's no mystique about it. You just need to be observant, a little bold perhaps, and to have a small, handy camera in your hand, finger on the shutter button, all ready to shoot.