As the name indicates, street photography is the art of capturing the raw and day-to-day interactions in the streets and on roads. People mostly know this niche of photography as candid photography. Interestingly, the rising Instagram culture has made street shoots quite common. People are now more attracted to the random shots of events and happenings in unknown streets and on roads. Despite its rising fame, there are a lot of misconceptions associated with the street photography niche.
Novice photographers are usually told that capturing life in streets hardly requires any practice or skill. Many even think that any random and disoriented picture taken in the street easily qualifies as a street shot. These and many other such ideas lead many to buy the most expensive cameras. Young photography learners think that they can easily ace street photography just with a powerful camera in their hands and don’t practice anything at all.
The truth is, a powerful camera can undoubtedly help you take amazing shots no matter where you are. Even then, you’d first need to learn and practice some tricks of capturing the streets. Once you know the basics, you can start expecting yourself to shoot like a pro. Take the Nikon d750 as an example. This is one of the most preferable cameras for street photography nowadays.
The Nikon d750 is an easy to handle camera that comes with features like a 24MP lens, fast shutter speed, efficient burst mode, 6.5 fps. AF and multiple sensors. Even with all such great features, your shots can only be enhanced if you use this camera the right way. Here are some tips and tricks that you can use with your d750 to ensure using it in the best possible way. Following these rightly will surely help you ace the street photography experience.
Slow Down And Look Around
Even when street photography is about capturing the candidness and raw events, it doesn’t mean that you start shooting everything you come across. Instead, you need to slow down and look around, finding the best possible frame and element to focus on. Looking around once you reach your shoot location helps you find the most amazing things to capture.
You’d want to capture a cat with a child sitting in a dark end of the street than only capturing those who are walking on the pavements. Finding the latter and shooting it is quite common and easy. However, it is only when you stop and slow down when you find something wholesome to capture.
An easier way to slow down is to go about shooting only when you’ve nothing else to do. You’d hardly stop and look around the street for something worth capturing if you’re shooting with limited time on your hands.
Another tip for slowing down is to select quiet and emptier streets for shooting. You can’t expect to find something wholesome in a street where everyone is in a hurry. Luckily, your Nikon d750 can help you slow down and spend time finding the best thing to shoot anywhere. This camera has a very long battery life, thus allowing you to spend as much time as you want to find something worth shooting. Another plus of this camera is its lightweight body that can be carried alone for with no difficulty as such. You can even hang your d750 on your shoulder, going about the business all day long without feeling tired at all.
Work With The Light
Another benefit of slowing down and noticing the street before you start shooting is that you can find a better light for the shoot. Usually, city streets are low on light because of the taller buildings all around. If you shoot a street like that, you might need to work very smartly with the available light. It’s better to select the ends of streets and the broader turns to shoot since these points usually have more light than others. Another good idea is to either shoot in front of the cafes or bars in the streets or use the streetlights for lighting purposes. If you’re shooting at night, you may also take along some portable light sources with you.
No matter how low or poor the light you find is, you can easily enhance it by working with your camera’s settings the right way. A better idea is to work with the shadows and reflections that the available light has formed at the spot. For someone who uses Nikon d750, lighting isn’t a big deal to manage. The camera allows you to set exposure and ISOs in whatever way you want, within a few seconds. Such an easy functioning helps a photographer make the best use of whatever light is available, thus excelling at candid shooting quickly.
Think About How Your Work Will Age
Even when unknowingly so, street photographers are capturing things for the ages to come. When you record the day-to-day happenings of a city’s common streets, your work will help the next generations to understand the life of your time. This factor makes street photography a beautiful form of historical art.
Also, it puts a lot of responsibility on professional street photographers. Since your work is going to be witnessed for ages, you need to capture only what’s timeless and meaningful. Street shots need to show the better side of life in your times so that the next generations can draw inspiration from it.
Because of such long-lastingness that your shot will have, you need to consider how your shoots will age. Your work needs to be so timeless that people of all times can relate to it and understand it equally well.
Additionally, it should deliver a timeless message about morals and humane values for the world to come. The only way to ensure all of this is by focusing on the elements that deserve to be focused on. Thankfully, the Nikon d750 comes with a great AF feature, thus doing much of this job for you. All you need is to make use of your camera’s AF sensors the right way, and you’d capture something timeless.
Use Your Camera As A Key
If you plan to professionally take up street photography, you’d need to make friends with your camera. When your camera is your closest friend, you’re automatically pushed to explore more. You’d fearlessly work with its different modes and settings, ultimately finding the best possible scenes to shoot in. Many photographers find it hard to push themselves to go out and explore the streets at odd times. However, such a hurdle can be well-catered if you love working with your camera.
Using such potential of the camera to your benefit, you can easily use it as your key to a successful photography career. Having a good camera like the Nikon d750 gives you the confidence to attend more workshops related to your photography niche. You can make friends with like-minded people over there and can collaborate with them to learn more.
A good thing for the users, the Nikon D750 is quite a resistant device. It can quickly be taken along on windy and rainy days without needing you to fear for its safety. Other than this, this camera has an interactive user interface that lets you customize the settings and modes as per your desires. You can fearlessly work with this camera in whatever manner you want, thus making sure that you capture the best and the most innovative shots in your streets.
Get Inspired From Photography Books
Many novice street photographers are asked to stay away from the work of others in their field. Those who advise such a thing think that looking at someone else’s street shots can lead the new photographer to simply reproduce the same. Such an act of copying can make this photography niche boring and lead to a lack of creativity in it.
However, such an idea isn’t really useful, especially for those who are learning street photography on their own. Suppose you have a passion for this particular photography type. In that case, you will surely find ways to add innovation and creativity in any shot you capture. However, you’d always need a starting point to guide you to click your first-ever street shot. This guidance can be best gained by drawing inspiration from the work of your seniors.
The more you look at the work of street photography experts, the better are your chances to succeed in the field. There’re some specified magazines and websites publishing street shoots each month. You can look at them to draw inspiration and look at the creative trends in your field. The best part is that your Nikon d750 has enough memory for you to store all those shots in it. Later, upon running out of inspiration, you can simply look at those stored shots on the camera’s crystal-clear LED and try to create something on the same lines on the spot.
