Five Great Tips for Improving Your Street Photography

Professor Hines is a street photographer whose work has a distinctive look and feel that is shaped by his approach. In this short video, he shares some excellent tips for how to shoot and gives an insight into how he creates his images.

While many street photographers might close down the aperture to achieve a deep depth of field and try to ensure that what they want is in focus, Professor Hines (a.k.a. Kenneth Hines Jr.) uses a different approach, as explored in this short video from Jason Vong. Hines frequently uses a shallow depth of field to isolate his subject, which is not to say that he doesn’t know when it’s important to stop down, something he explains with a few good examples.

In one of his points, Hines discusses the amount of attention he pays to his surroundings, trying to preempt where people will be and working to include them in the frame that he’s seeking. What he doesn’t mention is how much of this anticipation comes from knowing his city really well: Hines clearly loves New York, and no doubt spends a huge amount of time on the street, a factor that goes a long way in allowing him to create his images.

What tips would you add to this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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4 Comments

I realize Hines is the one giving the tips but it's Jason Vong's video and yet he's not credited once in this article. Seems a bit odd that he gave Hines a platform to give the tips only to get the short end of the stick on Fstoppers. Please update the post to credit JASON VONG as well.

Really good video, I love how your subjects pop out within the shadows of daily life.

Done. 😊 And apologies! FWIW, there's always a "via" footnote at the bottom of our YouTube articles that links to the author, but I've since added a mention to the article body too.

Nice Video. Thanks.