Portrait photography tip: Experiment with street portraits
Friday 9 July 2021, 16:32 by Elja Trum | 4,388 views | 1 commentThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
A fun and challenging branch of portrait photography is street portraits. You photograph random people on the street. You can do this with or without their permission.
Street photography is a broad subject that could fill an entire book. A great way to take street portraits is simply to stand or sit somewhere inconspicuous in a busy, touristy city. You soon stop standing out and can photograph in peace.
For example, you can point your camera at one spot and wait for passers-by to walk into the frame. That is how I photographed the cyclist above at the Dom in Utrecht.
It often works best not to photograph with a huge amount of equipment. With just a camera around your neck fitted with a compact 35mm lens, you stand out much less in the streetscape than with a large 70-200mm lens on your camera.
Of course, street photography does not always have to be 'secret'. You can also simply approach people and ask if you can take a photo. This often produces a different kind of street photo, because people are much more aware of the camera.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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1 comment
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Ienke wrote on Tuesday 13 July 2021 at 16:16 | replyMy experience is to show the photo afterwards, this often gets more positive reactions, ‘how nice, would you like to send me the photo?’ Etc. I let them enter their email address themselves on my phone. And after confirmation of receipt I promise to delete the photo and the email address. I use a special Gmail address, where my name cannot be found. With children it is more sensitive, so in advance do ask for permission. Entire families have thus already been ‘captured’ just like that in a neighborhood playground, where I take photos of grandchildren as a grandmother.
Translated from Dutch.
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Photofacts; everything to do with photography!
Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
