Street photography is one of the most challenging and rewarding genres of photography, with an ever changing range of image opportunities that change moment by moment.
Within street photography there are also a bunch of sub-genres, and below are 3 of our favorites', ranked on how ‘close’ you get to people in working in these genres:
1: Urban Landscape
Urban landscape photography brings together broader street photography with architectural and landscape photography.
Rather than focusing on the people in the environment like documentary or urban portraiture, the urban landscape photographer captures human-made interventions, structures, and environments within a scene.
For instance, you could include Auckland harbour, parks, trees or other natural elements in your scene, with city streets or skyscrapers as the subject matter of your images.
Or your image could be ‘fully man made’ streets and buildings.
The key with Urban Landscape photography is that people in the scene are not the subject of the photograph but where they exist are simply supporting elements in the image.
Long exposures can also be a fun tool in urban landscapes as peoples motion can add dynamic elements (motion blur) or even remove people from your scene altogether. At night urban long exposures can add spectacular light trails, star trails, and more.
2: Documentary
Documentary street photography, as its name suggests, is about documenting, and being open to, what unfolds in front of you.
While not as formal as journalistic documentary photography it still focuses candid human behaviour in ‘real-life’ situations and can still play an important role in capturing candid images of people and places - capturing engaging moments in time.
A key goal of documentary street photography is telling the stories of what is being documented, with intentional narrative being a key element of the genre.
3: Urban Portraiture
Urban portraiture combines the environmental aspects of documentary street photography with principles of portrait photography to tell the stories of people in their environment.
Unlike documentary street photography where you keep your distance’, urban portraiture involves engaging with people ‘on the street’
With urban portraiture you’re approaching interesting people and connecting with them to capture their portrait within their environment.
Within urban street portraiture there are a few ways of going about it:
Street portraits: This is when you approach someone you don’t know on the street, and ask to take their photo.
Event portraits: This is where you take portraits of people attending a public event where people dress up in an urban setting.
Model portraits: Here you photograph a professional model, organising the shoot in advance and planning ‘most’ of the shoot from start to finish.
Shooting urban portraits is a great way to shake things up and break out of the passionless photography rut we sometimes find ourselves in.
Particularly with street or event portraits, it challenges us to get out of our comfort zone and create portraits of perfect strangers. This is not always easy to do, however when you connect with the person, you often end up with much better images.
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