Street Photography – Getting Those Real Life Shots
Friday, August 1, 2008 @ 01:01
Street photography is an often overlooked genre that is only recently making a resurgence in modern society. The classic technique for street photography involves fitting a wide or moderately wide-angle lens to a camera and then setting the ISO to a moderately high speed of 400 to 800, and then just pre-focusing the lens and letting 'er rip. You may think this is a dumb way to take photographs, but actually it isn't. Since wide angle lenses have a very good depth of field, it won't matter if your subject winds up being 10 feet away, with the lens set for 12 feet. Unless you are going to make huge prints of your photos, the error won't even be noticeable.
Street photographers will often set their lenses at hyperfocal distance. This distance, of course, will depend on the lens focal length as well as the aperture, but basically will be the closest distance setting for which subjects at hypothetical infinity will be acceptably sharp.
Street photography has experienced a rise in popularity in recent years because photographers have found that they can get some interesting photographs just by setting their cameras up and photographing whatever happens to come along. Whether you get a couple of children chasing each other or a street person foraging for a scrap of food amongst an overflowing trash can, the photos depict raw humanity, with nothing to gloss over their innate failings, or the tragedy of their so human condition.
The joy of such photography is that it can be shot anywhere, be it in a modern city or on the streets of your small town. Regardless of where you decide to shoot the photos, you can rest assured that they will be unique.
