A street portrait is a different aspect of photography and refers to capturing photo of someone, usually a stranger, on the street. The concept is related though not restricted to converging one’s focus on the subject’s face. Here are some important tips on how to master the art of street photography:

Maintain Simplicity

A busy, cluttered and complicated background ruins a street portrait. Such a background makes your subject look flat and plain and as a result, you fail to capture the depth that meets your eyes. Simplicity is the ‘king’ concept in this context as it adds depth to your composition. A busy background will easily outshine your subject and divert your attention.

Break & Organize

The best way to simplify the process of capturing the perfect street portraits is to break everything into elements and assemble those in an interesting way. The idea works as our eyes see everything in 3D, thereby making everything complicated for our perception. Every minute, human beings see and sense millions of elements of visual information from everything around us but our sense is more powerful as it can pick up on things taking place even behind our back.

Eyes Say Everything

It’s often said that face is the mirror of our mind and eyes are interpreting everything. When you go out for the first time to take street photos, you feel being at sea. You hurry up a lot, most probably you don’t want to offend or irritate anyone and have a plan for quick finishing. But practice makes a man perfect and patient. The more you work on this beautiful aspect of photography, the more you will be able to unfold the deep-seated emotions of your subject.

Adopting a more patient and relaxed approach while taking street photos will give plenty of space to the subjects and help them reveal their feelings through their gestures, faces and most importantly their eyes. Eyes reveal their thoughts and feelings.

Wait to Watch Comedy Sides of Your Subject

The beauty of good street portrait photography lies in the photographer’s flexibility in opening up, learning things, having patience and watching subjects to do funny things. Once you are on a busy street, there is a plethora of subjects to capture. But patience pays and you need to spend time to observe everything around you and witness humanity as well as human comedy.

Choose an Inspiring Background

Street photography has an interesting tradition related to finding a suitable location and background. Once you find it, you just have to wait for the most suitable subject or something amazing to happen in front of your eyes. Patience is the must-have quality in this regard and with practice, you can develop the trait over time.

Use Colour

Colour speaks a different language that conveys thoughts and feelings in a compelling way. When it comes to street photography, some photographers stick to monochrome as they believe ‘black and white’ communicates feelings in the most powerful way. However, some professionals use colours to do things differently.

But there are different opinions which are also accepted as sometimes stage photographs too deserve creative mentions.