Street Photography Ain’t That Serious
Street photography can get a bit heavy, can’t it?
All the rules.
All the debates.
All the (often anonymous) critics digging everyone out.
Do you know what I think?
Street Photography ain’t that serious.
Not because photography doesn’t matter. Yes it matters. I’ve built an amazing life around it. I’m a photographer for a living. I run workshops. I make videos. I care about what I create very much.
It’s just … we need to loosen the grip relative to how important we think photography is.
Somewhere Along the Way, We Forgot to Play
Eh … this is me!!!
When you first picked up a camera, you probably weren’t thinking about legacy.
You weren’t worried that some bloke in a Facebook group is gonna think the highlights in the photo you took are too hot.
You weren’t having an existential crisis thinking about some spud on Instagram who has a problem with … crops.
You were just creating.
Pointing the camera at things … and having fun.
Experimenting … and having fun.
Getting it wrong and enjoying the challenge of attempting to get it right.
The buzz you felt creating a little bit of magic often by accident.
That was the time before photography became a strange little prison made of rules, fear, comparison, and “what will people think?”
If I’m Not Having Fun, I’m Not Doing It
When I’m out shooting street photography, I want to feel alive.
If I’m not having fun, I’m on the wrong track.
And I don’t mean every second has to be hilarious. Street photography can be frustrating.
But underneath it, there has to be some kind of a spark. That creative energy.
Maybe it’s a feeling of mischief.
Or curiosity.
A sense that the process of creating pictures … is enough.
Be Playful With People
This is especially true with street portraits.
People can get so serious about approaching strangers that they end up shooting from a kind of apologetic place.
You don’t have to be like that.
You can be warm in your approach, for sure.
And it’s fine to be you.
You can be a bit cheeky.
You can have fun and be playful with the person you’re shooting.
Otherwise that person you’ve stopped will feel like they’ve been dragged into a some bizarre, photographic hostage situation.
Taking a street portrait doesn’t have to be that serious.
Be playful like I said. It’ll open a lot more doors than being some people pleasing robot.
Post What You Want to Post
And this applies to what you share too.
Post what you want to post.
Seriously.
You’ll get feedback. You’ll get opinions. You’ll get someone telling you it’s not “real” street photography, or the edit is too much, or the subject is too central, or the shadows are not right and all of that stuff.
So what?
Let them.
Is it really that big a deal?
We need to lighten up. It’s not as if everything we post is being lowered into the fuckin’ National Gallery by a team of white-gloved historians.
It’s Instagram.
It’s Facebook.
It’s the internet.
It’ll be buried under a photo of someone’s dog, or a video reel of some bloke bunji jumping off of Big Ben by morning.
Are We All Leaving Grand Legacies Behind?
People put this weird pressure on themselves.
Like everything has to mean something.
Like every click has to contribute to some great everylasting archive of human existence.
And listen, if that happens, great!
For me, I’m a little more light hearted about the whole thing. I want every image I shoot to be the best I’ve ever shot and … I’m not shooting thinking my image is going to be carved into the side of a big mountain for future civilisations to decode.
Stop Clutching Photography Like It Owes You Immortality
People are even freaking out about AI now.
“It’s going to end photography.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
But even if everything changes, what then?
Go outside.
Make something else.
Adapt.
People hold on to things for dear life, like photography is the last fuckin’ lifeboat leaving the Titanic.
But you see … for me … a camera is just a vessel I use at this point to share my point of view of the world.
It’s never been about cameras or even photography for me. I’ll use whatever tool serves me best at this point to share what I want to share. Right now it happens to be the camera.
What it’s really about though is the way I see the world and doing my best to express that.
The way I pay attention.
The way I interact with the world.
Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody or nothing can ever see the world the way I see the world and nobody can see the world the way you do.
Lighten Up and Shoot
That’s really the point.
Care about your photography, yes.
Take the work seriously.
But don’t take yourself so seriously that you kill the joy of creating pictures.
Next Step
If you want to get punch your street photography up to the next level, the Dare Photography workshops are made for you.
Real people. Real growth.
Let’s shoot!
