The Holistic Photographer

Street portraits - Approach

Wanted to start with techniques first, since they are 50% of your street portrait, but will leave it for the next part.

Negative answer (amateurs biggest fear) 
Wanted to get this out of the way first. It’s not a big deal. You can’t expect the everyone is in the mood of having their picture taken by a total stranger. Some don’t even like to be photographed. It’s a game of statistics, some people are up for it, other’s are not. It’s not the end of the world if you get couple of negative answers. 

Self confidence (spread the positive energy)
You must be self confident and it must look as if you know what you are doing. I say this cause most people don’t want to be bothered by a guy who is clueless at first sight. Self confident look will give you 70% chances for a POSITIVE answer then looking clueless. Displaying your emotions is great too. Smile a lot, look excited that you’ve meet them and it will boost their felling’s as well.

The Talk
I usually approach them with smile and hello. Ask them where are they from, see if they are interested in talking … make sure they see that I have camera and I just ask them after couple of lines if I could take a photo of them.

Important tip: What if they asked you why do you shoot? For what or who? You can tell them that you are doing some kind of project that was gave to you by your photography teacher or something similar. This works most of the time, cause if they are good people as they mostly are they will want to help you out.

The first one is usually to break the ice. In most cases they open up, start talking about things. I ask questions, they ask questions and I shoot all the time. Sometimes I spend 30 minutes with them, enjoying the conversations and getting shoots you just can’t get when you talk to someone for 10-15 seconds.

Important tip: Sometimes they are indecisive and you need to tip the point to your side. That means that you need a little more persuasion with smile of course and they will agree. Couple of words from your mouth and you can get an awesome subject and great photo.

Many times we walk together and talk, of course I shoot :) You need to get them to open up. If seniors (that I mostly shoot) I ask them about their grandchildren and other happy times subjects … that’s when they truly shine.

Sometimes you meet a guy with sad story. He tries to look tough, but eventually will break and open up and there it is again … priceless emotion. Focus the eyes. They will tell you everything. 

So, that’s it for the first part. Need to keep them as short as possible, will continue soon.

Percents in this article are purely fictional! :)