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"Street photography is like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get."
Thomas Leuthard
About Me
My name is Thomas Leuthard and I’m a
street photographer from Switzerland. I
started to focus on street photography in
2009 when I decided to take all my photos
with an 85mm lens in the streets. After
some time I realized that this lens was too
long for this purpose. The focal length
changed, the name remained and I got
closer and closer. Today I take some of my
street photos with a 50mm from a very
short distance.
Why I wrote this book?
There are several reasons why I wrote this book and why I didn't. I didn't write this book to show off or because it's hip to write a book. I was starting to blog on 500px and realized that people read it and that they wanted more. Some people even mentioned that I should write a book. It's like with a lot of other things. It just started small and got bigger. You cannot start big and say I want to write a bestseller and get famous with it. It's not the way it works. This is just a collection of my thoughts about street photography and some tips on how you should work as a street photographer.
Why I give it away for free?
I'm very privileged to be a street photographer with the latest gear and the ability to travel around the world. I can afford this through my full time job in Information Technology. Some of my contacts from all over the world don't have this privilege. But these people still want to learn about street photography. They are eager and motivated to get out to the streets with their cameras to make photos. Street photography is a very affordable way of photography and I want to keep it like that. That’s why I publish this book free of charge…
What is street photography for me?
Street photography has changed my life in a way that I didn't expect it would.
I suddenly have a plan in my life. I have an activity where I can use my creativity. I get challenged every day. I don't get bored because it's always different. I can travel the world for a reason and I can meet a lot of people. And last but not least I wake up in the morning with a smile. Street photography is not just another way of photography. It's a way of life…
Why another book?
I’m not interested in the history of street photography or the old masters. I’m interested in the way it is done today and what kind of tools and possibilities we have these days. Therefore it will be different to other books as it is my personal experience written in my way of thinking. I sometimes tend to have a slightly different view about things, but you will realize that during your reading. I’m into street photography for more than two years now and it’s about time to write down everything I know about it.
Table of Content
1.
Table of Content
4
2.
Introduction
6
3.
Equipment
8
4.
It’s Prime Time
10
5.
My Workflow
13
6.
Learn to see
16
7.
Have a Plan
19
8.
About Light
22
9.
Composition
25
10. Camera Settings
27
11. Decisive Moment
30
12. Perspective
31
13. Post Processing
33
14. Color or B&W
37
15. Grow your Balls
41
16. Going Candid…
45
17. Safer Shooting
49
18. 3 Ways to Shoot
51
19. The Law
52
20. Legalize it
54
21. Ethics
57
22. Rocking Flickr
59
23. Flickr Explore
66
24. Marketing
70
25. Copy is right
75
26. Your own Style
79
27. Some Excuses
83
28. Traveling
85
29. The Best Time
86
30. New Places
88
31. Balancing
89
32. The Future
92
Introduction
Where to start?
This is the question, most of you probably ask themselves when they start to learn about street photography. I will help you out by answering "Read this book first…". Then after reading this book, you will probably know enough to get out to the street and start shooting. Don’t expect to become a master immediately. You cannot learn it in one day. You have to go through a lot of phases and you might never think you have reached the top. But exactly this is what makes it challenging and interesting.
What is street photography?
It’s not that simple to explain.
Sure you can go to Wikipedia
and find an answer there. In
my words, it’s the documen-
tation of life in public in a
candid way. Nothing is setup,
nobody was asked and it will
never be the same again. It’s
like holding up a mirror to so-
ciety. It’s a single human mo-
ment captured in a decisive
moment.
When is it street photography?
Bruce Gilden once said that “If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it's a street photograph” . This brings it to the point. You cannot point your camera out to the street and make a photo. It’s not that simple. I guess you have to get into it to understand it. Some people even say that 99% of the photos out there are not street photography at all. Don’t think too much about this, just look at other people’s photos. Most important is that a photo tells a story.
What are the differences?
Street photography is very versatile. The hardcore guys see strange things on-ly. Like people in the foreground matching the background in color, patterns and so on. Some people more like a daily situation or emotion. Some make photos which make you think or which tell a story. I personally like candid portraits very much, but some people even think this is not street photography at all. There is no rule or right way. Just figure out what you like and follow that path until you get it right.
Equipment
Gear is highly overrated
You may ask a lot of people and you will get a lot of different answers about which camera is the best for street photography. You can also buy a new camera every year as there is a big industry telling you that you should buy new equipment. But if you remember the old days, the masters of photography, did they have good equipment? Not really. Compared to today's features they had nothing. But with this "nothing" they made incredible artwork.
Never ever think that you can do better photos with a better camera. This is absolute nonsense.
Use your built-in tools
There is only one thing that makes a difference in street photography which is your eye. If you have a good eye, you will see the relevant things. If not, you will have problems seein
g the relevance. It sounds simple, but you just have to train your eye to become a better Street Photographer.
The gear I’m using
Currently I do 95% of my street photos with my Lumix GF1 and a 20mm pan-cake lens. For candid portraits I use my Nikon D7000 with a 50mm lens. That’s all I need. There is not a lot of different equipment being used on the street.
You can have a look at the EXIF data of the photos in this book by clicking on it. I have linked every photo to Flickr where you can see all the details.
The smaller the better
While you have to have a big camera, when you have a shooting for a cus-tomer, in street photography it’s more important to have a discrete camera.
The smaller the better is the key. Since I started shooting with my GF1 I noticed that people don’t even realize that I have taken a photo of them. Sometimes they think I’m a tourist, which is perfectly fine for me.
"The best camera is the one that is with you…" - Chase Jarvis
The faster the better
I like it when the camera is fast enough to capture the action. I want to be sure that I get the shot when I want it to. So no shutter lags or focusing problems are allowed. Therefore the auto focus and the shutter speed are the key elements for a solid camera on the street. Often you have to be fast and if you can shoot a series of photos it can help at the beginning to capture the decisive moment.
What about the Leica M9?
Some people like the Leica rangefinder cameras. They think this is the only camera for street photography. The main reason for that is the size of the camera versus the sensor size (full frame). Sure it would be nice to shoot with a Leica, but in the end you have to be able to afford it. I have seen good photos made with mobile phones and I have seen bad photos made with Leica M9’s. It’s not the camera that makes the photo. Maybe I will have a different opinion about the Leica one day, but today I enjoy shooting streets with an affordable camera.
It’s Prime Time
Prime lenses: smaller, faster, cheaper, sharper, better…
A prime lens is a lens with only one focal length (e.g. 50mm) where you cannot zoom. You have to walk to get something bigger or smaller in your viewfinder. Why should I use a prime lens? A prime lens has a lot of advantages.
Here are the top 5 of them.
Smaller
Prime lenses can be made very small. The ones without AF motor are even shorter than your camera thickness. Especially for street photographers this can be very handy as you will not look like a photo journalist. Your street photography will become much more discrete with a prime lens, which you will appreciate a lot.
Faster
A prime lens is normally faster than a zoom lens. The maximum aperture on a zoom lens is not faster than f/2.8. On a prime lens it is most of the time lower which means there is more light getting to your sensor. You can shoot with less light and you can achieve a better depth of field. Just be sure to verify at which aperture your prime lens is the sharpest. The 50mm 1.8D from Nikkor is not as sharp at f/1.8 as it is at f/4. This is an important point to remember.
Cheaper
There are pretty cheap 50mm lenses out there, which are really great. Prime lenses are always cheaper compared to a similar zoom lens. They are easier to produce which makes them cheaper. Of course there are also very expensive prime lenses. But there will be no comparable zoom lens to them. Especially for beginners a prime lens would be the better choice. But when you buy your first camera you think you have to get as much zoom as possible. Everybody makes this mistake at the beginning.
Easier
With a prime lens you save the time of zooming in/out. This may sound not that important. But when you always shoot with the same focal length, you exactly know how your frame will look like. Therefore you also know exactly where you have to stand for a candid portrait to fill that frame. With this knowledge about the framing not having to zoom, you probably save one second. During this second you can shoot 4 photos which might be essential for a candid portrait. You may think that this is nonsense, but you should try it. It really makes a difference.
Sharper
The quality is also better on a prime lens compared to a similar zoom lens. I have never seen a bad prime lens. Even the very cheap Nikkor AF 50mm 1.8D
for $120 is sharper than any average zoom lens from Nikon. I used it for 2
years and took some of my best shots with it. Just be sure that you use it on f/4 to get the best results. f/1.8 is not as sharp as f/4.
Conclusion
There is nothing else than a prime lens, especially for street photography. For other kinds of photography a prime lens may not be suitable. I love especially the overall performance and the price of prime lenses. For the street they are priceless and they even help becoming a better photographer. You have to think about the framing, before you look through the viewfinder as you cannot zoom. With a 50mm you will learn a lot about composition and framing. It will also speed up the preparation to a photo which can be essential. Start your street photography with a cheap 50mm and you will be fine.
My Workflow
It's more than you think
A lot of people think that street photography is just pressing the shutter release button at the right moment. For me street photography is a big process where you can make a lot of mistakes and where there are a lot of challenges.
I think there are a lot of opportunities to improve your photography which doesn’t really involve the act of shooting itself. There are so many factors influencing someone's work and the success of it. I would not say that I'm a successful photographer, but I can at least say, that there are some people reading my blog, looking at my photos and reading this book.
My workflow is different
When photographers talk about their workflow, they mean the creation of a photograph from pressing the shutter release button to the final print. In street photography and in my eyes this workflow begins much earlier and never really ends. There are so many activities you can do with your work in order to get it seen by the public. It somehow ends when you upload it to your website and share it with your community. But the good photos you may hand in to contests, print to postcards, other people will use in campaigns and so on. When a photo is being created and shared, its lifecycle just begins and the workflow starts. Ideally one of my street photos is being shared around the world that people all over the place can see it, use it, like it, print it, show it to their friends and whatever you can imagine. I will talk about the rights later in this document.
The unseen existence
I have seen a lot of photographers who have great work and interesting websites, but nobody looked at their photos. With my workflow I try to change this sad, unseen being of good photographs. I want to share my work among my social media contacts and my family. There are great opportunities nowadays to really get your work out of your camera onto everybody's screen. Sure it's not easy to really get famous and earning money. This book is not about earning money, it's about how you can become a good street photographer who uses modern ways of communication and a different mindset of sharing his photography.
A three phase approach
I see my workflow in three different phases. The first part is the preparation, an idea, a plan, learning how to see, train your eyes and such things. It’s actually everything that has nothing to do with your camera. This means all your thoughts, your reading, your looking for new opportunities and ideas. The second phase is everything with your camera and the processing afterwards until a photo is finished. So you take the camera out of the bag, make the shot, go home, process it and store it on your hard drive. Then the third and most important phase starts. What are you doing with this photo you have taken and processed? There are many ways and ideas about this phase. I will talk about it in different chapters.
No camera porn
A lot of people are too much into technology and cameras. The second phase gets highly overrated in street photography. S
ure I like to go out to see interesting things and shoot them. But the whole camera thing with the processing is not why I do street photography. It’s not really a challenge after some time.
The camera does its job and my processing is, most of the times, done in less than 2 minutes. You should not waste your time with processing and the technology. Get the basics about photography and your camera and that’s it.
The rest you learn on the street by taking photos.
Learn to see
It’s all about your eye
In street photography there is only one thing which is really relevant. It’s all about the eye, your eye. You have to see things before you can capture them.
No matter what camera you are using, first you have to see what is going on, first you have to realize what is happening next and second you have to virtually compose the photo.
Forget your camera
A lot of people care more about cameras, lenses, equipment, file formats and other technical things. Forget all about technology and camera settings. Put your camera in P mode and don’t think about it anymore. You have to train your eye first, before you can think about capturing a scene.
Simple Exercises
As a first exercise take a color (e.g. Orange) and shoot the whole day things in this color. You will suddenly realize how many Orange things you see in your city, which you have missed before. This means that you have to concentrate your view on one thing only in order to really get the best out of it. You don't even have to take photos; you can just walk and look around, trying to see as many Orange things out there. Often it's more important to see things than capturing them. When I miss an opportunity, I'm always happy that I have seen it in the first place.
The street is your stage
Also try to see a combination of things, colors, background with the people on your "stage". Imagine that you provide them a big stage and they are the actors. You just have to wait until they get on the stage before you can capture them. Find the right spot and wait for the actors to show up. Sometimes this needs time, but often it will happen, when you really want it to happen. Normally I don’t wait much more than a few minutes. Things that have to happen will happen in this timeframe. If they don’t, continue with something else.
Going Candid... Page 1