Street Photography (also referred to as Candid photography) is photography conducted for art or inquiry that features unmediated chance and random encounters. Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic.
Many famous street photographers include:
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) He was a french photographer who mainly focused on using street photography on capturing a decisive moment using a 35mm film.
Helen Levitt (1913-2009) she was an American photographer who was particularly noted on using Street photography round New York, and was called “The most celebrated and least known photographer of her time”
Vivian Maier ((1926-2009) She was again an American photographer who worked for about 40 years as a nanny who pursued doing photography within her spare time, eventually become a well known street photographer.
How to undertake street photography.
In order to successfully complete a street photography photo shoot, you will need to sit in a busy area but where you can still have a clear view on some people to photograph. It is better to have no relationship with the people that you are photographing so you can get their natural emotions as they would act without the use of a camera to capture the moment. You can either walk around and take photos or find a place to sit down and take photos from the same position.
Personally I would recommend sitting down and taking photos in an area with quite a few people that circulate around the area. This is because you can have time to set up the camera and focus on the model you are photographing, whereas if you are walking around it is hard to focus on a person/people and you may not have the perfect aperture or ISO set on the camera, as I found out during this shoot. I also realised that if you aren’t positioned in an area, and are walking around then people may realise that you’re taking a photo of them, therefore act differently to fit into the social desirability bias.