7 RULES OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve been into street photography as a hobby for almost 7 years now using any gears that I can use ranging from 1.3 megapixels camera phone to a high end DSLR. 

Whazzup everybody! Shooting on the street is fantastic. There are so many great scenes of great stories to capture. Street Photography is a landscape of stories.

To understand what is Street Photography, please click here.

Street photography is freedom but like freedom that follows morality to be Free, Street Photography must also follow certain rules to be street photography. 

GENERAL RULES

1. Images must be taken in public places: Streets, museums, beaches, parks, events, clubs, and the likes. Any public places.

2. Images may not be staged or posed by models. 

3. Images do not necessarily need to have people but must imply human existence on it. 

4. Images can be colored or in Black and White. Many think that as long as the partially unsaturated picture  is already a street photographs. IT IS NOT always the case.

5. Adding or removing an element is a mortal sin in street photography. It’s like photojournalism. This is why street photography is a real challenge for street photographers. 

6. Cropping the image, enhancing the image color and black and white conversion is fine but photo manipulation is not for Street Photography. 

 Photo below: Is this street photography because I placed a street on the image?

7. High Dynamic Range (HDR) images are not a street photography because it uses heavy post processing tools. Am not against HDR images. I do HDR photography also but not on this genre.

NOTE: I purposely ruined my humble image above converting it to HDR. 

MY OWN RULES (THE REASON WHY I MAY NOT BE CALLED A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER)

1. I usually follow the general rules but… 

2. I sometimes break the rule. I am guilty of removing some unwanted elements on my images. There are times that we can’t control moments. I am taking my images in public places. It means am not in control of what is really happening there. I am there just to capture a story. I compose, I framed, but upon clicking my shutter, a man’s shoulder came in into the frame. Should I throw away that captured moment? A big NO for me. 

Original image

vs.

How I see the image

3. I don’t just convert my images into Black and White, I make my images look and feel a little bit vintage.