First, just like any photography, there is good street photography and lots<\/em> of bad street photography.\u00a0 Unfortunately, street photography is the hardest genre of photography to master and too many photographers never move beyond the snap shot.\u00a0 Discerning good street photography from the bad is the first step to really enjoying this style of photography.<\/p>\n Good street photography generally incorporates strong compositional elements like reflections, juxtaposition, leading lines, the rule of thirds, etc..\u00a0 Great street photographers will include multiple layers in their photographs…\u00a0 This can either mean layers of subjects (something in the fore, mid, and background) or it can mean they’ve included multiple compositional rules within their image.\u00a0 Bad street photography looks like someone stood back and took a snap shot of a bunch of people walking this way and that with no real emphasis on one particular subject or theme.\u00a0 Sadly, you’ll have to sift through a ton of this to find the good stuff.<\/p>\n The most important ingredient though is emotion.\u00a0 If the photograph doesn’t elicit some sort of emotion then it fails on an elemental level.\u00a0 The best street photography transcends the need to understand the genre and elicits an emotion in the viewer that is both poignant and memorable.<\/p>\n Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n – David DuChemin<\/p>\n Do you like photographs in the newspaper?\u00a0 That’s generally street photography.\u00a0 The recording of the life and times is a type of street photography called photojournalism.\u00a0 The so-called “father of photojournalism” Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the best street photographers of all time.<\/p>\n Without street photography we would not know what the world looked like before we were able to form memories of it.\u00a0 Iconic images like the sailor kissing the woman in Times Square after (or really shortly before) the end of WWII would have never happened.\u00a0 Without street photographers braving the elements and risking life and limb to photograph strangers we would have very little visual documentation of the past.<\/p>\n Le d\u00e9jeuner sur l’herbe by Claude Monet<\/p><\/div>\n Documentation aside, the raw art of street photography is really quite beautiful if you give it a chance.\u00a0 Often times I’ll see or take a photograph that speaks to me on a more personal level.\u00a0 It’s easy to relate with the human subjects within street photography, more so than landscape photography because, well, they’re human.<\/p>\n Street photography is art.\u00a0 There are entire documentaries and books devoted to the relationship, the correlation, between painters, sketchers, and street photographers.\u00a0 For instance, if you’re a fan of Claude Monet then you are subjecting yourself to early street photography and you didn’t even know it (image above).<\/p>\n Could you see this image as an abstract painting?<\/p><\/div>\n No venture in life has challenged me quite like street photography has.\u00a0 The timing, the mood, the sheer luck of it all have to coincide with one another to create something worth keeping.\u00a0 I often consider myself lucky if I get one or two good shots a month or a handful of great shots in an a year.<\/p>\nW<\/span>hat’s So Great About Street Photography<\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/a>T<\/span>he Difficulty<\/h3>\n