Street photography is an exciting genre that can quickly sharpen your technical and creative skills, but it also is not for the faint of heart. If you are interested in street photography but find yourself a bit shy to tackle it, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features an experienced shooter giving five helpful tips for apprehensive photographers.
Coming to you from Pierre T. Lambert, this excellent video tutorial features five practical bits of advice for shy street photographers. No doubt, street photography can be challenging for even the most extroverted among us and downright impossible (or at least seemingly so) for the more apprehensive, but if your primary genre is something like portraits or weddings, it can be a really beneficial thing to practice. Street work requires you to be able to quickly read light and visualize compositions while simultaneously understanding and anticipating human behavior, and, of course, those are the same sort of capabilities that will make you a better wedding, events, or portrait photographer. Just remember that there is no single right away to do street photography. Do it in a way that keeps you safe and allows you to feel comfortable and able to explore your creativity and develop your technique. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Lambert.
One of the main problems for street photographer novices is simply apprehension at getting their camera out in public and being seen by the people around them with it. One thing they might want to consider is taking photos without people in them, just to get used to being out and seen with a camera and avoiding any confrontations. They can work up to photographing people once they are confident with photographing out in public. Besides, great photographs don't always have to have people in them and you don't have to rigidly follow the street photographer purist definition of street photography (as in must contain people).
Yeah, I'm always bothered that there's no people in the term "street photography." A road is not people.
I really don’t care for a purists definition of photography genres. A good photograph is a good photograph regardless. Besides, that’s not the main point I was making.
I forgot which video had it (I'm fairly certain it was Sean Tucker) who said that you just hold up the camera in place and just let people walk into (or not) your shot. Most people don't think that you are shooting them and they mostly just don't care. I also suggest, just don't point the camera directly at them to give them that illusion. Most people especially in cities don't really care.