Welcome to the StreetSnappers community. Here you'll find techniques, advice and tips from a professional street photographer. We'll cover tips and techniques, we'll analyse the work of some of the 'big name' street photographers, there will be regular Q&As, image critiques, book reviews and just a bit about gear (this isn't a gear / reviews channel).
I'm Brian Lloyd Duckett, a UK-based documentary and street photographer. I'm the founder of StreetSnappers and I run documentary and street photography workshops around the UK and Europe and I'm the author of five best-selling street photography books including the newly-published 'Street Photography Workshop' and the 'Street Photography Pocket Guide'. Please see my website for more info: www.streetsnappers.com.
Thanks for tuning in and I hope you find my channel helpful :-)
You don’t want it to not engaging why take photos of them like they are manniquens they are people with stories who deserve to know what your doing. And it’s lovely to engage and speak with them
I shoot with a Nikon full frame. I bought the 40mm a couple of years ago because it's a good compromise between the 35mm and 50mm. I really like that lens. It's one of my favorites. I bought the 28mm around Christmas last year and now it stays on one of my cameras. I usually use it on my z6 II. My z8 is just a little too big and heavy to walk around with with the way I shoot. If I had bought the 28mm first I may not have bought the 40mm. I like walking right by someone up close and taking a photo of them without them knowing. I'll either have the camera hanging from my neck or around one shoulder and let the camera hang a bit lower. I can turn the camera in portrait view that way very easily and hold it in one hand. I do have a wrist strap but I don't really like it that much. I use zone focus and I'm getting better at angling the camera in the right direction and angle without having to have the camera at my eye. Sometimes I'll hold my camera high close to my right shoulder near my chin. I can angle it inwards to point out at someone to me left. I can walk down the sidewalk and take the photo as I pass by our as I meet someone. The 28mm let's you be really close and still get a lot of things in the background in the frame unlike the 40mm. I think a wider angle lens is more forgiving because it has a wider depth of field even at f/5.6. I never thought I would get into our like street photography. I mainly shoot landscape and milky way photos. I find street photography to be more challenging. It's always different when you go out even if you're walking the same streets. I have an IG account but I don't post as much on it. I'm fact it's private. There's too many fake accounts with links to porn sites always trying to follow me. If I made it public I would have to go through the followers every day to block those accounts so they wouldn't have access to my other followers. My photography is just for me. I mostly post on fb.
i appreciate your videos on photography, you are an encyclopedia of knowledge to any new photographer. understanding failure is over 90% of photography put in to perspective to never give up and do what you can to get your photos out there. I save videos like these for reference of what not to lose track of. thank you for giving these artists a tutorial on increasing the chances of success. You are well respected for what you bring to us amatuers and pros alike.
I've had the good fortune of discovering your channel on you tube as someone who's new to street photography and eager to learn. I truly appreciate your obvious expertise, your welcoming energy and your teachings. Thank you. I've been listening to a number of your videos over the past few days and am very grateful to have discovered you. Thank you again.
So many gems of solid gold advice. I will watch this again & again. I'm just getting into street photography and very much 'finding my feet'. I confess to being a little nervous about photographing strangers and have decided to use a 25mm prime on my MFT. I like to use a square crop and your lecture gave me an idea to shoot close to people by having them off centre so it looks like I'm photographing past them. I have a f/0.95 prime and love shooting wide open for the lovely bokeh with short DoF which looks fantastic in monochrome with a super vintage look. I found your lecture very inspiring. Yesterday I visited a local indoor market (on a shopping expedition) which has a beautiful high glass roof that provides some gorgeous light, is great when it's pouring down and I'm excited about revisiting it just to do some photography and your lecture has made me feel more confident. Thank you. Subscribed and liked.
I find 50mm limiting, I've used 40mm f2.8 for some years now on Canon, and I'm used to it. Feels the perfect size to encapsule what I see into the frame. I just got a Nikon FE with a 50mm 1.8, yesterday I found myself missing shots for being too close and having to get a bit away from the action. I'm eyeing the Voitlanger 40mm now.
Excellent information and way to configure the camera for street photography, the clarity of its exposure resolved some doubts and left me ready to return to the street. Greetings, see you soon
Thanks Brian for your explanations regarding the angles in which we shoot. Long time ago the 28 mil f2.8 was my main lens for all kind of subjects. Why f2.8? The matter of costs but at the end it helped a lot to get the eye balls much easier sharp compare to f2 or even f1.4. But using 28 mil depends on your personality and the interaction with strangers. From my point of view it‘s most important to habe enough „sideground“ around the main subject otherwise the photographs are only useful for passports. A 50 mil f2 (again costs) i used for pub indorshooting because the field of view and background is mostly much darker than the ca subject. Now 50 years later i don‘t have the‘bite‘ anymore, but i try….. Thanks for your channel!
If your interested in seeing his work Saul Leiters exhibition is on at Milton Keynes MK Gallery until 2nd June 2024. It has travelled from Japan to the UK and then it's next stop is Germany. What is interesting is the images are not large like Don Mc Cullins exhibition at the TATE modern, most are small prints printed during 1950s even his large famous colour prints are roughly A4 size. The exhibition consists of four rooms dedicated to his work with the addition of some of his paintings. It's worth going to see.
I respond by saying, I'm working on my portfolio. I don't engage in arguments and walk away in silence. It works wonders but takes practice standing your ground.
I said that if you set a minimum shutter speed in the auto ISO menu (say 1/250th) then you are guaranteed a fast shutter speed, until the ISO hits the upper end of the range, at which point the shutter speed will fall.
just watched a video with a street photographer taking old lady in the street without asking her first. it's a problem. a real problem with internet publication and AI theft. try to take photos which do not disturb or record people's faces etc
That was absolutely wonderful video presentation. It was filled with lots of practical information for setting up my camera for street photography. Thank you very much.😊
I struggled to get night shots to look like "night" until i realised a combination of LED street lamps and AUTO ISO was turning night into day. I now set ISO to 5600k and things looking much more "night".
Aaarrrh, NO. You're WRONG. You can't minimise things cause you have factory production. Factories require money to survive. ___________________ Do you understand that? ___________________ The factory 🏭 have produced for YOU, 30+ lenses. YOU DEMANDED THAT. YOU MUST use a big majority of those 30+ lenses. Your minimum standard use kit MUST CONTAIN 6 lenses. That requires 3 camera bodies. YOU as a professional MUST carry around with you, 5 camera bodies and 15 lenses. YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR screwing this hobby and profession down to the bare minimum where the factory 🏭 can't survive. You have narrowed down the supply of photographs to the public to the bare minimum of photographs. YOU ARE FULLY INSANE in your approach to photography.
I recently discovered your channel and love it. You are an amazing educator and presenter on RU-vid. I was a newspaper photojournalist for 20 years laid off in 2009. Then I went to commercial for 11 years so that I could make some money finally. Watching your videos really makes me miss editorial work and being on the street every day for 20 years. Throughout my life I have always shot film. Of course we shot digital in the newspaper, but my personal work has always been film in multiple format up to 8x10. I recently got the Canon EOS 1V out of the closet and I’ve been trying to do some street photography and it’s been fabulous fun. I live in Phoenix, Arizona so it’s not New York City but it is still fun and thank you for your videos and I look forward to finding more of your videos and watching new videos as they come out.
Really great video. I was a 35mm guy... but becouse of my kind of photography (street or reportage) I switched to 21mm or 25 (my lovely old lens). I can tell a story with more elements in a image.
I like these videos but is it just me that finds this one a tiny bit patronising? And do the examples of small town photography have to be quite so grim? For me, street photography is about people, buildings, streets of course… regardless of the size of conurbation. And there’s joy and misery to be found (side by side often) in any size of place…
