Photographer Alfonso Calero shares five simple tips to help you capture memorable street portraits.
01 LENS CHOICE
While a long lens may seem a logical choice for street photography, you will attract much less attention with a small lens such as a 35mm or 50mm. The great French street photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson used one lens, a 50mm, for almost all of his images. No one likes to have a long zoom directed at their face, but with a wider lens it's not so obvious who you're photographing. If people start to notice you too much then it will be difficult to capture something spontaneous.
02 BACKGROUND
Look for neutral, simple backgrounds that add contrast and put the emphasis on your subject. Busy backgrounds distract from the main game, and unless they really add something to the story you should try to avoid them. Remember, photography is the art of subtraction.
03 LIGHTING
Lighting can make or break a portrait. Be aware of where the sun is and what the shadows are doing. Nice soft (diffuse) light is the easiest to work with – cloudy days and morning and afternoon light often produce good results. Avoid shooting in direct sunlight in the middle of the day.
04 SHUTTER SPEED AND MOVEMENT
If you are shooting people moving down the street you need to be aware of shutter speed. Set your camera to shutter priority (you control shutter speed and the camera controls aperture) and choose a setting that best suits the effect you're after. To freeze the action go for 1/250s. You could also consider experimenting with slower shutter speeds to capture a sense of movement. Put the camera on a tripod and choose a shutter speed of 0.5s or slower (a neutral density filter will help you get a slower speed while balancing the exposure). You could also try panning with a shutter speed of 1/30s or 1/60s for a fast paced walk to create a blurry background.
05 SHOOT RAW
I always advise people to shoot in Raw mode. The downside is larger image files and less space on your card, but it gives you more control over variables such as tone, sharpness, noise, colour and white balance. Programs like Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop and Capture One offer great Raw processing tools – and they're all relatively easy to use. As well as basic image editing, I also use the post-production process to consider which images work well side-by-side and to convert some images to black-and-white.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Alfonso Calero moved to Australia at the age of 15. He graduated from the Sydney Institute of Technology with an Associate Diploma in Photography in 2001 and has been professionally photographing food, portraits, landscapes and travel subjects ever since. He started a travel education and tours company four years ago delivering workshops every Saturday morning in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Fremantle. He also takes groups of four people to Japan, Philippines, Spain and Tasmania once a year for 10-14 day photography workshops.
Photo: Alfonso Calero.
Photo: Alfonso Calero.
Photo: Alfonso Calero.
Photo: Alfonso Calero.