Hi Jane,
Street photography is becoming popular again. If we are going to start making a better record of the world that we live in then this is a good thing. Unlike other forms of photography though, street photography does involve a degree of intrusion into other people's lives, most of whom we have never met before.
Many photographers offset this intrusion by using a long lens and hope that they go unnoticed. There are some challenges to using long lenses though. To begin with, having a 70-200 mm lens on the front of your camera is never likely to go unnoticed.
Then there is the problem that long lenses usually
have very shallow depth-of-fields.
This is the problem you have with this photograph. While you do have the
coffee machine and the cups in focus, the barista is distinctly out of focus.
Ideally it would be good to have both subjects in focus.
Having looked at the EXIF data for this photograph I can see that you are working in what is otherwise know as the “Hail Mary” range of shutter speeds… the exposure is so low (1/25s @ f2.8, 640 ISO) that you do not have a lot of latitude to move around with this image.
One option might be to increase the ISO to 1600 or even 3200 ISO. Noise can be a problem at these ISO settings but since you're working in black-and-white you can afford to write this off as grain. With the faster ISO you can then afford to close the aperture two stops to about f5.6 to gain more depth-of-field.
As an additional option though, I would be inclined use a shorter lens, perhaps even the 50 mm for the sake of increasing the depth-of-field.
Finally, I would give some consideration to the framing of the image. The guy is almost lost the background of this picture but if you were to wait a moment, or even to ask nicely, there is a chance that you could get in position against the bright doorway. By this stage you are starting to bring more design into your photograph, and this is a good thing.
Keep up the good work, Anthony.
Image Doctor's edited version
