How To Find Your Street Photography Style

When it comes to photography one of the most common goals that all of us have is to define our own style. In other words we want our photos to have a unique voice that can be recognised by others. A common misconception is that style is something that is mostly governed by how we edit our images and although it does have a large impact, it is only a slice of the style pie, so to speak. In this blog I want to breakdown all of the components that go into creating your style and give you a few tips on how you can find yours. 

Purpose

Lets first talk about purpose because ultimately that will have the initial impact to your style. What I mean by purpose is why are you taking photos? Is it because you want to document the struggles in the city you live in with raw emotion or is it because you want to make very beautiful photos of all your weekend trips away? Do you want to sell your work or are these images just for your own memories? Do you want to really focus on making pieces of art or is photography more of a therapeutic activity you enjoy? The reason I ask you this is because your style will be vastly different depending on how you answer these questions.

If you are documenting struggles, your images will be raw, gritty and maybe not very pretty to look at. However on the other hand if you are in a beautiful Italian town and want to make really nice warm images that would make for great post cards and memories, then of course it will be a very different look to the previous example. 

I am firmly in the beautiful Italian town group so straight away it has an influence on my style. So my tip here is to really think about why you are doing street photography, or any photography for that matter because that will definitely push you in a certain creative direction. 

Your Life

If you are in your 20s or 30s, single and travelling around, your photos will have a very different feel compared to someone in their 40s and 50s with a family. I really do think that your photos are a direct reflection on where you are in life. As an example take Josh Jack that I am sure you all know. He is knows for his night time Soho photography. However in an interview he said the reason for that is actually due to having insomnia and going out to shoot at midnight was a way for him to deal with it. My advice here is don’t try to fight this and if anything embrace it and see where it goes. So for example if you have kids, then maybe documenting war zones might not be for you…. However warm seaside town photos will be more up your street. 

Location

Your choice of location can have a big impact to your style. Let’s take London as an example. If you shoot mostly in Shoreditch, Camden Town or Brick Lane, you will get a very different aesthetic, subject matter, mood and light compared to shooting in Bank or Canary Wharf. In the same way if you prefer to shoot in small seaside towns, you will get a very different look compared to places like New York. We can even go more global and say that if most of your work is in Asia, it will have a different look and feel compared to the Middle East and so on. 

If we take me for example, I don’t shoot around gritty places like Shoreditch or Brick Lane very much because for the type of images I like, locations like Bank, anywhere by the river and the west end are more suitable. Not to say I never shoot there, as a matter of fact I go there a fair bit…. It’s just for every photo I take there that I like, I take like 50 in the other locations. So my advice is really think about what locations you enjoy shooting in and focus more of your time there.

Light

Now we are really starting to look at things that have much more considerable impact. As a matter of fact, light probably has one of the biggest impacts to your style. The most obvious one is nighttime or daytime photography. We can then break it down further into cloudy days, sunny days, foggy days, blue hour, golden hour, midday and so on. So for example I tend to shoot only on bright sunny days, foggy days or during sunrise / sunset. You will not find me very often taking photos on overcast days or at night because they just don’t fit my style and the look I like. My advice is to find 2 or 3 lighting conditions that you like the most and really focus on them. 

Weather 

Same as light the weather can really dictate your style. An easy example is taking photos in the rain or in the snow. There are some photographers that are known for taking photos during stormy cold moody weather while others like me only take photos on beautiful warm sunny days. Basically my point is that your preference in weather will play a huge role in your style.

Subject 

The subject can play a large part in your style. For example in most of my photos, I prefer to have a person’s face hidden. Whether it is by having them silhouetted or at a certain angle as to no show their face. Other photographers prefer the subject’s face clearly visible and even the main part of the photo. Another example is I include many London busses in my work because they are an iconic and instantly recognisable part of the city. Your subject will depend on many of the points we already covered but ultimately there is no right or wrong. My advice is to just shoot what you like and over time you will pick up on these patterns and can hone in on them more

Camera 

The biggest impact here will come from shooting on either film or digital, not only from an aesthetic point of view but more importantly is that your approach to photography will change with film as you will really have to slow down, take your time and account for a few other things. Other than that, sensor size will have little impact unless you compare extremes like medium format and your iPhone but even then the impact from solely that difference will be far outweighs by everything we covered so far. I would personally not overly worry about this and put it firmly at the bottom of the importance pile. 

Lens / Focal Length

This is where gear can make a big difference in your style. The main thing to think about is what focal length do you enjoy using the most and find gets you the best results. For example I know people who shoot on ultra wide lenses almost exclusively and I also know people to whom a 70-200 is a staple part of their street photography set up. The reason this defines your style because the look you get from those two extremes is very different. For example in my photography about 60% is done between 50mm and 80mm. A further 30% is around 35mm and only 10% wider than that. It means that I am known for using the longer lenses and not ultra wide thus pushing my style in that direction. My biggest tip on this is to use a general zoom like a 24-70, shoot 1000 good images that you like and the filter in LR by the focal length used. 

Creative Choice

Creative choices can be things you actively do to the image during capture such as long exposures, light trails, intentional camera movements and so on. I can’t comment too much on this because none of that is my cup of tea but all I can say is if you do any of these things do it because you are either curious or you 100% genuinely enjoy it. Don’t do it because it is trendy on social media.

Editing 

Editing is obviously where we can really push our style and influence how the images look. However that said keep in mind that your editing will not create a good photo out of something average. What I mean by that is if you took a photo and the lighting was crap, don’t expect to create the amazing light in post. My view is that editing can simply steer your photo within the constraints of the conditions under which we took the image. For example my photos have 0 sharpening and negative clarity to give them a very soft look. I sometimes further enhance that by adding the Orton effect in photoshop. I would also tend to not over saturate my images and keep the contrast on the lower side to make them a little more cinematic. 

Presenting 

Finally our style can be governed by how we present our images. For example white borders on Instagram or photo sets can have an impact on how people perceive our work thus adding to the style. Although being able to effectively present your work is important, I would not overly fuss about this point. Certainly not until you nailed some of the more impotent points I mentioned before.  

Summary 

As you can see there are many things that go into creating your style and please don’t think that you need to have every one of those defined and set. As long as you have at least 1 or 2 of those nailed, you will already start heading in the direction of your style and as you develop you might further narrow it down by adding more items from that list. Finally keep in mind that your style will evolve over time and will in a way mirror your life. 

If you get bored with your style after a while or you find it changing almost on it’s own, don’t stress or panic… this is a good thing. It means you are developing. Also keep in mind that it takes a very long time to define your style. This is definitely not an overnight thing… we are talking months or even years. So if you find yourself getting frustrated as to why it is not defined yet, just know that everyone goes through this. The final point is that you can’t force this. The way you get to your style is by experimenting, failing, trying something else, liking it and building on it over time and practice.