69 — Street photography tips

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #69 dis­cusses street pho­tog­ra­phy; what gear to use, what to shoot, how to shoot, should I ask the subject’s per­mis­sion before I shoot etc. This topic was sug­gested by TJD of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum, so many thanks TJD! One thing I for­got to men­tion dur­ing the pod­cast con­cerns model releases. If you never plan to sell the image, in Canada and the U.S. at least, you prob­a­bly (I’m not a lawyer so this advice is worth what you paid for it as opposed to 2oo bucks an hour) don’t need one. If you plan to sell the images you shoot, then it makes good sense to bring a release form with you.

Street photography by Henri Cartier Bresson

Rue Mouf­fe­tard, Paris and Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Paris by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Robert Dois­neau

July’s Heat” assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

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You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Comments

  1. Lauri says:

    Hi,

    Thanks for your pod­cast: it’s really good. I just wanted to share some of my tips for street pho­tog­ra­phy. I haven’t been doing it for a long time but I’ve dis­cov­ered a cou­ple of things that really help. When you shoot, you have to be bold and brave: either you get the scene or you don’t. My approach is just to sneak up to a scene, take the shot and leave. I pre­fer the 50mm lens but wide angle (i.e.24,35mm) shots can be very inter­est­ing. The impor­tant thing any­ways is to get close because that way you have the chance to get a closer inter­ac­tion with the sub­ject. If you only shoot tele­photo, peo­ple will think your a voyeur if they see you. It’s just best to be hon­est about what you’re doing. Most peo­ple are gonna feel sur­prised after­wards (think­ing that I’m some kind of lunatic) but usu­ally they’ll just for­get about me and con­tinue what­ever they were doing. It’s always bet­ter to shoot first and answer ques­tions later.

  2. philippe says:

    Awe­some shot of this frence kid after the war

  3. admin says:

    Hi Gra­ham — Thanks for the com­pli­ment!
    I have no answer to your ques­tion other than a per­sonal one. Legally you have every right to pho­to­graph peo­ple in pub­lic with or with­out their per­mis­sion. Whether you choose to ask for that per­mis­sion comes down to per­sonal ethics.

    Most peo­ple will not be into sign­ing your release form unless you offer them some­thing.… That said, if you do not plan on sell­ing the pho­tos you take you likely have no issue. I have used model releases many times, but never for street photography.

  4. Graham says:

    Hi Marko

    Right at the begin­ning of the pod­cast you men­tioned model con­tract form.
    I would like to know your view on pho­tograph­ing peo­ple with or with­out their per­mis­sion and then ask­ing them to sign. Is there a best way of approach­ing peo­ple for this?

    Thanks for the pod­casts, really well pre­sented, easy to lis­ten to, and informative!

  5. admin says:

    Hey thanks for that Mark For­man! Much appreciated

  6. Mark Forman says:

    Hi Marko,
    First time lis­tener I plugged this ep at the Pentaxforums.com Good gen­eral overview on this topic. I’ll be back for more :D

  7. i4macro says:

    Hi Marco, Recently I bought a Nikon D40 and started exper­i­ment­ing with the set­tings. I found your pod­casts excel­lent as they con­tain lots of tips. Thanks for all the motivation.

    Please keep up the good work.

    Cheers,
    i4macro

  8. admin says:

    Thanks for the com­ments and the heads ups about the feed and thx again TJD — I’m away for just a bit longer and will fix the sucker up. Thx all!
    Marko

  9. AntZ says:

    Marko,I enjoyed the pod­cast on street photography.Now to get out­side my com­fort zone and snap away;)

  10. Jantheo (TJD) says:

    Hello Marko,

    Thanks for adress­ing the sub­ject of street pho­tog­ra­phy here.
    Just for the right con­text from your announce­ment in the pod­cast, TJD … I am HE … first name Jan­theo liv­ing in the Nether­lands and lis­ten­ing to your pod­cast as often as possible.

    Now the past weeks I have not seen any updates in I-tunes (#67 is the lat­est there and still is I tried to find newer pod­casts.) Strange as I found, when I finally made some time to browse your web­site, there were more pod­cast episodes… with to my pleas­ant sur­prise had one adress­ing the sub­ject of Street Photography…

    Could you please let me know what to do to get back up to speed with the iTunes auto­matic down­loads. As I am writ­ing this I see here there have been more com­ments on the iTunes thing.
    Thanks for your atten­tion when you are back and I will wait for that…

    Greet­ings and thanks for going into this sub­ject.
    It will be help­full for going on the annual world­wide­pho­towalk from Scott Kelby that is going to hap­pen Juli 18th,
    Jantheo

  11. admin says:

    Thx for let­ting me know! I’m away for a short while but will deal with this ASAP upon my return. thx again!

  12. RobvE says:

    I am in Aus­tralia and since episode 67 I do not see an update any­more on iTunes.. I’ll down­load from the site but thought to let you know..

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