Chapter 5

Styles of Street Photography

One of the most common misperceptions about street photography is that it all looks alike. If you’re at all familiar with the work of the best street photographers, it’s obvious that there is an amazing amount of stylistic freedom and variation in this photographic genre. One photographer’s images can be dramatically different from another’s, even when they are literally photographing the same streets at the same time.

On the other hand, it’s also true that most of the street photos you can find on the Internet are unadventurous and conventional. If you suspect that your images fall into this category, this chapter will supply ideas for reenergizing your work by giving it meaning and direction. I won’t tell you what to do and how to do it; instead, I intend to open your eyes and your mind to possibilities. We will look at examples of what’s been done before, what’s being done today, and think about what could be done tomorrow. Who knows? You may develop a style that’s unique. You have a lot to gain and little to lose from experimenting.

What Is Style?

Before we get too far into this subject, let’s agree on what we mean by style. One definition is “a working method or approach.” Some photographers have a very discreet and stealthy style of photographing their subjects. Others are more direct, even confrontational. Some are contemplative, others impulsive. This type of style will be determined in large part by your personality. We all tend to develop a system of shooting that’s most compatible with who we are, our outlook on life, what we’re most comfortable with, and what we’re trying to accomplish.

The definition of style in terms of an artistic aesthetic is “the consistent visual characteristics that identify and distinguish your work.” Call it your visual signature if you like. The way your photographs look is a form of self-expression that observers can use to gain insight into your personality and what interests you. This is the type of style I intend to focus on.

Style Has Value

A stylized approach to shooting is one distinguishing factor that separates the street photographer from the documentarian or photojournalist. The documentarian or photojournalist is expected to maintain a measured objectivity toward subjects and events, but the street photographer is free to make an artistic statement. All options are on the table: you can be a Surrealist, Expressionist, cynic, optimist, iconoclast—whatever floats your boat.

A consistent style will also help distinguish your work from that of other street photographers. This is particularly useful if you’re shooting with a digital camera (like most photographers these days). Straight-from-the-camera digital images have a homogenous quality: bright colors, accurate white balance, sharp focus, long tonal scale, minimal granularity or noise. That’s fine if that’s what you like. If you’d like something more unusual and adventurous, there are multiple ways to achieve something different and uncommon.

The need or desire to distinguish yourself from others is particularly important if you’re entertaining the idea of submitting portfolios to selective galleries, either physical or online. Their primary objective is to showcase work that is somehow exceptional. What, after all, would be the point of showcasing work that anyone could have done and that does little to excite the viewer’s interest?

How to Develop a Style

Developing a distinctive style takes study, time, and effort. You may be tempted to accelerate this process, perhaps by mimicking the style of some master you admire. There’s nothing wrong with this. Mimicry can provide useful firsthand insights into a master’s working methods to achieve similar results. Too much mimicry, however, will cause your work to be obviously derivative and clichéd. While it is a good learning exercise, mimicry is ultimately a dead end in terms of developing your own style. There are limitless possibilities if you originate, but only limited possibilities if you duplicate.

Another common way to distinguish your digital images from others is to post-process them. You can use software to make it look like you were using a particular type of film, processing technique, or “art filter.” The trick is knowing how to do it without drawing undue attention to the fact that the image has been processed. The look you choose has to be compatible with your subject matter, personality, and message. If you use too heavy a hand or indulge in whatever effect happens to be the flavor of the moment, the results won’t be authentic and engaging examples of your style; instead they will be a lot of over cooked images.

The time-tested way to develop an authentic style is to invest time, study the masters of any visual art (including painting), and shoot a lot. Practically all of the masters of street photography were trained in the visual arts. Many worked as photojournalists, fashion photographers, filmmakers, or in similar professional fields. Their styles were the result of conscious choices they made about whose work and ideas influenced them. They made deliberate decisions about how, when, and why to take a different approach. Most importantly, they knew what they wanted to say with their work and how they wanted to say it.

Because so much of style is based on your personal choices and preferences, the most that I or anyone else can do is be open to possibilities. It’s up to you to look inward and discover what moves you. If you see photographs you like with a style that you aspire to achieve, feel free to try it on for size. The point isn’t to copy it exactly. (Why would you? You’re trying to develop a personal style, right?) The point is to learn what you like and want to adopt as your own versus what you don’t like and prefer to toss out.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Adjust the way you shoot to suit your skill level. Combine styles and techniques in ways you find appealing. Keep at it long and rigorously enough and your work will eventually take on a visual coherence and consistency that may surprise even you.

The Elements of Photographic Style

Style is ultimately a reflection of the choices you make. You choose what camera and lenses to use, when and where to shoot, your subjects, what exposure settings to use, when to release the shutter, and so on. The more conscious and selective you are about these choices, the more distinctive your style is likely to be. The following is an exploration of the choices available to you: the elements of style. Give thought to which options and choices appeal to you most, and whether or not you’re even making conscious choices at all. Is your style a product of intent or default? There are no right or wrong choices; there are only choices that support a coherent vision and those that don’t.

Camera Choice

The camera you use influences your style to the extent that it optimizes or limits the way you can work and the results you’re looking for. Cameras that have a large sensor or have large film formats provide a richness of tone, color, and detail that’s hard to replicate with small-format cameras. The downside is that such cameras tend to be large and heavy, which makes them more difficult to carry for long periods of time. These types of cameras lend themselves more to relatively static subjects.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are small pocket-size cameras. What you give up in richness of detail and the ability to create prints in large sizes, you gain in having an inconspicuous, unintimidating camera that is easy to carry anywhere and use at a moment’s notice—sometimes without even raising it to your eye. If you like to travel light and be ready to capture an image in the blink of an eye, you probably prefer a pocket-size camera.

There are, of course, intermediate-size cameras that provide various degrees of compromise between these two extremes. It’s important that whatever camera you use doesn’t cramp your style (as in “working method”). As long as you’re able to do what you need to do with minimal effort and inconvenience, you’re using the right equipment.

Lens Choice

A photographer who is shooting for a client or for a specific purpose is obligated to use the lenses best suited for that project. If you’re doing sports or wildlife photography, you’re going to need a telephoto lens or two. If you’re doing low-light photography, you’re going to need fast lenses. As I mention in the Techniques chapter, most street photography is done with wide-to-normal focal length lenses. You may discover that the environments you shoot in and your method of shooting favor wide-angle lenses over normal lenses, or vice versa. The lens you use is an integral part of how your photographs will look. Don’t fight it; embrace it. The better you get at previsualizing how your images will look with certain lenses, the better prepared you can be for taking those shots. The fewer distractions you have to deal with on the streets (what focal length is this zoom set to? Do I need to move closer or further away?), the better your ability to seize photographic opportunities when they appear.

Color vs. Black-and-White

There are street photographers who shoot exclusively in color simply because it’s the default mode on their camera. Others shoot exclusively in black-and-white because it’s the classic look for street photography, so they assume it’s the way their photographs should look. There is nothing wrong with choosing one or the other, but your images will be a lot stronger if your choice is motivated by something more than conformity or default settings. You should be striving for a specific mode of expression. For example, you can use contrasting, complementary, or selective colors as compositional elements. You can use a background of desaturated or neutral color to draw the viewer’s eye to one or two bright, saturated colors. You can alter the color balance to make the overall mood look warmer or cooler.

You have similar options with black-and-white photography. You can heighten or reduce the contrast between tones. You can use color contrast filtration adjustments to make specific areas lighter or darker. You can use black-and-white simply to strip your images of the distractions and complications of color.

There is no need to shoot exclusively in one or the other. Each option has its strengths, weaknesses, and challenges. I personally use both, depending on what looks best for a particular image. That said, I group my black-and-white images separately from my color images so that each portfolio or body of work has a coherent look.

Left Foot Forward, Philadelphia, PA 2011

Rock & Roll Home Run, Woodland Little League Complex, Cheltenham, PA 2011

Kid in Car, Harvard Square, MA 1972

Colorful Shirts, Philadelphia, PA 2011

Street Reflections, Philadelphia, PA 2012

Boxed In, New York, NY 2013

Blue Sawhorses, Philadelphia, PA 2010

After School Scene, Rock of Gibralter, 1982

Film vs. Digital

One of the reasons many street photographers prefer to use film rather than digital cameras is because of the particular look of film images. No matter how well various film emulators may mimic the look of film, film has a distinctly different look from digital. For starters, every film emulsion has a different look. Print films look different from slide films. Kodak films look different from Fuji films. High-speed black-and-white films look different from slow-speed, fine-grained films, especially if you develop and print them yourself. You can enhance the film grain to add texture and grit to your images or subdue it to enhance tone and luminosity.

There are, of course, just as many good reasons to shoot digitally, including speed, flexibility, minimal cost per image, and ability to review images on the spot. Just be careful not to be so seduced by the ease of automation that you default to point-and-shoot mode and forget to make conscious choices.

Lighting Dynamics

With few exceptions, street photography is shot in available light. It therefore stands to reason that the look of your street photos will be greatly influenced by the quality of light available to you. If you live and shoot in an area where the sun is almost always hidden behind clouds or tall buildings, your images will have a very different look from someone who lives where overcast days and tall buildings are rare.

Of course, you still have choices. If you live in a city of tall buildings and concrete canyons, you might be constantly on the hunt for those special moments when the light cuts through the gap between buildings or reflects off of a glass tower to create a spotlight effect. If you live where direct sunlight is almost always available, you might prefer to shoot in the early morning or late afternoon to capture moments when the sun is low in the sky, shadows are long, and backlight effects are dramatic. You might even try adopting the techniques of Bruce Gilden or Martin Parr. Gilden, who shoots in black-and-white, uses a handheld flash unit attached to his camera as a way to separate his subjects from the unlit background. Parr, who shoots in color, uses on-camera flash mainly to fill in dark shadows and add snap to otherwise dull lighting.

Three Silhouettes, Philadelphia, PA 2010

Woman in Glowing Red Blouse, Philadelphia, PA 2013

The Little Black Dress, Philadelphia, PA 2011

Hitchcock Silhouette, Philadelphia, PA 2011

Static vs. Spontaneous

In general, street photography places a high value on capturing those specific gestures, expressions, or compositions that define a split second in time. Those aspects separate memorable photos from forgettable ones. There are, nevertheless, varying degrees of spontaneity. There may be a particular day of the year or time of day when the light forms a particular pattern of shadows unavailable at any other time. Perhaps it’s a rare cloud formation, a rainbow, or a reflection on only one of a dozen windows. Some photographers have an innate feeling for these types of moments, while others have a sense for the exact 1/250th of a second in which to press the shutter. Either way, if your images prompt viewers to linger, gaze deeply, and marvel at your ability to separate the marvelous from the mundane, you’re obviously on to something—keep it up!

Dinette, Philadelphia, PA 2009

Lil’ Spot, Philadelphia, PA 2008

Gated Church, Altadena, CA 2009

Dancing Girls, Philadelphia, PA 2014

Skelley’s, Abington, PA 2012

Moving Plywood, Philadelphia, PA 2013

People vs. Artifacts

It’s worth remembering that classic street photographers such as Eugene Atget and Walker Evans built their reputations mainly on photographs of buildings, bridges, monuments, and other artifacts. They even used view cameras, which require a heavy tripod. In Atget’s case, the film emulsions were so slow and the exposures so long that any moving objects in his photographs were rendered invisible or appeared as ghostly blurs.

The reason such images are considered “street photography” is that, unlike traditional architectural photography, the goal was not to ennoble a structure for the sake of its designer or funder, but rather to portray it in the context of the street. Some structures look out of place with their neighbors and harken back to earlier times. Some look only days away from demolition, while others offer new and optimistic visions for the future. Some are elegant, others squat and ugly. These qualities aren’t necessarily inherent in the buildings themselves; they are all in how you photograph them.

Bottle in the Sky, Philadelphia, PA 2007

Buildings, monuments, and other artifacts seem so solid and permanent that you may feel no particular value or urgency in photographing them. You may think, “What’s the hurry? That building has been there for 20 years. It will be there tomorrow.” However, even landmark buildings and businesses disappear everyday. Berlin used to have a wall that separated east from west. New York used to have two World Trade Center towers.

This isn’t to say that you’re obligated to photograph structures and artifacts if you have no interest in them; it’s just a reminder that buildings can be just as ephemeral as anything else you encounter on the street. If you feel inspired to photograph a storefront church with an amusing saying-of-the-week posted on a billboard, or a pink car parked in front of a lime green building, go for it. You may never get a second chance.

Point of View

The choices you make about what types of subjects to photograph, as well as how and when to photograph them, can express a consistent point of view that is separate from that of the subjects themselves. Depending on when you click the shutter, you can make people look happy, hostile, haughty, or humble. You can emphasize what someone has in common with other human beings or what sets them apart. If there is humor in a photograph, you can make your subject appear in on the joke or the butt of it. It’s all dependent on what you’re attuned to and when you choose to click the shutter.

Let’s take Elliott Erwitt for example. Although a photojournalist by profession, Erwitt is best known for his black-and-white street photos that feature a clever wit, dogs, or both. However, it would be absurd to believe that instead of creating these opportunities for himself, he constantly finds himself surrounded by dogs and people doing amusing things. Isn’t it far more likely that he views the world through a “humor filter?” Erwitt, because of his personality and individual perspective on life, sees humorous situations where other might see nothing special at all. The result is that when you look at an Elliott Erwitt photograph you see not just the subject, but how that subject looks to Elliott Erwitt.

Two Surfboards, Santa Monica, CA 1978

For any such sensibility to appear in your photographs, you too have to have a particular point of view or attitude you feel driven to express. The more perceptive you are, the stronger and more persuasive the message of your photographs will be. If you’re more internally focused, consider that having something particular you want to express through your street photography gives you a more compelling reason to shoot than if you were only taking random photos of miscellaneous strangers on the street.

The same could be said of landscape photography, portraiture, sports photography— you name it. Regardless of genre, most photographs these days are unexceptional, mainly because they are produced by unexceptional photographers. I assume, however, that you are either an exceptional photographer or aspire to be one, which is why you’re reading this book and this chapter.

Punk Couple, Los Angeles, CA 1982

These two images both show subjects with a seemingly amused outlook. If you think the subjects look amusing enough on their own, consider this: a photographer with a darker sensibility might not have taken these photographs at all; or might have constructed them to have a considerably darker tone or message.

Quiet Smoke, Beijing Railway Station, Beijing 2012