HDR Photography Photo Workshop

Chapter 9. STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

CAMERA SETTINGS

WIDE-ANGLE STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

MID-RANGE ZOOM PHOTOGRAPHY

USING A COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERA

TECHNIQUES

Street photography is about being out there on the street, photographing people in fleeting moments of time. It requires a different set of skills than other disciplines. You will not be set-ting up a tripod and leisurely shooting brackets of an inanimate object or landscape. You must learn to be comfortable with strangers while you take their pictures. These are most likely not your friends, family, or models that you have contracted beforehand. You must learn to be inconspicuous and recede into the background as you carry around your gear, be ready to shoot at a moment's notice, and be patient.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, widely acknowledged as the creator of street photography, once said, "Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again." This is particularly true of capturing moments on the street — the everyday activities of real people going about their lives.

This chapter focuses on the mind-set and techniques necessary to capture these moments on the street for use in HDR photography. HDR complements street photography by allowing you to work under less than ideal lighting conditions, most often without a flash. You are able to keep highlights from being blown out and bring out details in processing that normal raw ...