The 5 Greatest Challenges of Street Photography
Street photography has become extremely popular, and this is good because it pushes us to create more meaningful work. But this is a difficult genre to work in (in terms of control and direction), and so you’ll likely find yourself grappling with some tricky challenges and struggles if you’re starting to walk down this road. I hope my list of challenges will encourage you to keep your passion for street photography alive — the list is not meant to scare people, but to make them conscious about the small prices you must pay for the fulfilling experiences that street photography provides when it is pursued with passion.
You’ll Feel The Need to Always Have a Camera With You
Street photography invites us to be prepared for any scene that comes our way. For some odd reason, DSLR cameras are considered to be the most professional piece of gear, and they are our first “best” option to start out in photography in a more serious way.
Before building our own aesthetic criteria — and way before even thinking about creating a solid style or personal voice — we experiment with common subjects (domestic items like doors and windows, lovely details that delight via macro-photography, flowers, etc.) This experimentation is a normal stage in the process of becoming a serious and committed photographer. This stage is useful because it allows us to understand the capabilities of our cameras as a means of expression.
As we move forward along our photographic road, some will genres seem more attractive than others (like street photography). The big problem is that we delve into the wonders of street photography with cameras that are far from inconspicuous. Most of the time this makes the photographic experience uncomfortable to perform on a daily basis.
Having a camera at all times will soon become a problem for the new street photographer if he or she hasn’t switched to a more portable tool and stuck with a chunky and noisy DSLR.
That’s why it’s good to start with a simple point-and-shoot camera to discover the beauty of street photography. Thanks to the notorious limitations these small devices impose on us, we can get a better grasp of the genre that excites our passion. With this invaluable insight, we can make a wiser gear…
