street photography is more popular than ever before, much of the work of many famous street photographers relies upon a certain technique or subject matter to define their style, The great thing about this type of photography is that it requires very little patience... look for strong shapes. buildings, roads, columns, railings and steps are all perfect examples. once I have found a good shot, wait until an interesting person walks past before taking my image.
if my camera can display grid lines in the viewfinder or on the LED, make sure I turn them on. This will allow me to compose my shots more precisely and achieve a balanced composition.street photography does not rely on there being exceptional light but does look for shadows and directional light that may add to my composition, and conform with the shapes and structures in the frame.
I use my camera to shoot street photography in the fully manual exposure mode. This means I am in full control (and have to set myself), my shutter speed, aperture and ISO in order to achieve exposure. If I get any one of these elements wrong I end up with an overexposed or underexposed photo. To set my exposure I use my camera’s in-built exposure meter to take a reading of the light (usually but not always in spot metering mode – more on that later) and adjust my settings accordingly.
Mostly my exposure settings will be a shutter speed of 1/500, and aperture in the region of f/16 to f/5.6 (more on that later), and an ISO between 500 and 6400 (roughly following the sunny f16 rule). Within this range, I am able to accomplish most of what I want to do with mostly natural light on days when the weather outside is sunny, dry, overcast, or even slightly Rainy.
The second part of my manual street photography experience is setting my lens to manual focus mode. for the majority of my shooting, I like to employ the zone focusing and hyper-focal distance technique in street photography. I select a small aperture (for a large depth of field), set my 28mm lens focus distance to around 1.5m, and can work safely in the knowledge that 95% of the subjects I want to capture will fall into my desired focal range, which at something like f/16 is from around just under a meter to about 4 meters – perfect! So, now I’ve covered my method very briefly, allow me to explain exactly why I like manual street photography so much.
Full manual mode street photography puts me in the pilot of the plane. Any mistakes are down to me, and any successes (such as they are) make me feel Better. It’s nice to have the sensation that I know exactly what the camera is going to do at any moment, and also that I can set the controls and exposure to suit my style entirely.
