Street photography composition: layers, lines and the right moment

A car park isn't somewhere you go to take beautiful photos. Grey concrete, white lines, a few cars. And yet, seen from above, it becomes a drawing. Lines, shapes, light and dark. All that's missing is someone walking through it.

That's how I like to approach street photography composition. First, find a place that's almost a photo already. The person comes later.

In this article:

• First the setting, then the subject
• Lines and shapes
• Frames within your frame
• Layers
• Empty space
• Figure and background
• Viewpoint and height
• Direction and movement
• The moment
• The edges of your frame
• Rules are tools
• Learning from your own photos
• Give it a go

First the setting, then the subject

A lot of people follow people around in the street. You spot someone in a striking coat, raise your camera and by the time you've focused, they've gone past. If you do get the shot, they're often standing against a cluttered background. With a lamppost growing out of their head.

You can also do it the other way round. Look at the place first. A wall in lovely light, a staircase, a shop window, a zebra crossing with hard shadows. Set up your frame and wait for someone to walk into the scene. Then your composition is ready before your subject arrives.

Decide in advance where you want that person to be. In that patch of light, between those two lines, just in front of that dark door. Focus on that spot, then concentrate on who's coming. When the moment arrives, all you have to do is press the shutter.

If nothing happens for fifteen minutes, perhaps it wasn't the right setting. Or it wasn't the right moment yet. Go for a walk and come back later. The light changes, and so does how busy it is. A place that was dull at ten can suddenly work at twelve.

At first, waiting feels like doing nothing. Meanwhile, you're looking very closely at one small part of the city. In my street photography tips, I wrote about how waiting often gets you further than chasing. Another advantage: standing in one place makes you less noticeable. That helps if you're still nervous about it. I've also written about this in my article on finding the confidence to photograph in the street.

"Photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place."

Elliott Erwitt

I like that because it's so matter-of-fact. An ordinary place. No remarkable city, no exotic market. A car park will do.

Lines and shapes

Cities are full of lines. Kerbs, tram tracks, façades, shadows cast by fences, road markings. They guide your eye through a photo. A diagonal line creates movement. A line pointing towards your subject is really saying: look here.

Shapes work in much the same way. A dark area beside a light one, a red wall beside a grey one, a stretch of shadow with just one person standing in the sun. The simpler the shapes, the more a person among them stands out.

A useful exercise: go out and photograph only lines and shapes. No people. After an hour, you'll see them everywhere. Next time, include someone.

In my conceptual street photography workshop, we use a guiding word to give our looking a focus. Choose Rhythm, for example, and you'll naturally start noticing repetition: windows, posts, steps, people walking in step. A word like that helps you learn to see lines and shapes.

Frames within your frame

A door, a window, a gateway, the space between two pillars. A frame within your frame gives your subject a clear place in the photo. The viewer's eye goes straight to it.

People framed by doors or windows also feature in my list of ideas for creating photo series. It's one of those subjects you can keep coming back to. Every city has different doors.

What happens behind that window does matter. Someone sitting in a café is different from someone sitting in their living room at home. My article on photographing people in the street explains what's allowed and what isn't. Where you draw your own line is another question.

Layers

A photo with layers has something in the foreground, something in the middle and something in the background. Three things happening at once that come together in one photo. It might be the hardest way to compose a street photo. And one of the most beautiful.

For me, Alex Webb is the best example. His colour photos are full of people, shadows and areas of colour at different distances, yet they all fit together precisely. You can look at them for ages and keep finding things. He's one of my heroes. You'll also find him among the well-known street photographers.

Creating layers is easier with a wider lens, around 28 or 35mm. It lets you include the foreground and background without having to stand a long way away. In my article on cameras and lenses for street photography, I explain why 50mm often gives your photos a calmer, more graphic feel.

A few things that help with layers:

• Start with the background. Find a place where something is happening at the back of your frame.
• Stand close to something in the foreground. A shoulder, a sign, a post.
• Wait for something to fill the middle too.

Don't expect it to come together quickly. With layers, you throw a lot away. But when it works, you know straight away why you did it.

Empty space

At the other extreme is empty space. A large white wall with one tiny figure. A square with just one person walking across it. A beach in winter.

Empty space gives a photo calm. And often a sense of loneliness too. The subject becomes smaller, but also more important, because there's nothing else to look at.

So you don't have to fill your whole photo. Plenty of people do, worried that otherwise something will be missing. Leaving space in the direction someone is walking or looking usually works well. Someone walking into the edge of your photo feels like someone walking into a wall. Sometimes that's exactly what you want. That can be a deliberate choice too.

Figure and background

Your subject needs room to breathe. That sounds a bit airy, but it's very practical. Someone in a dark coat against a dark wall disappears. The same person against a light wall stands out. So look at the background they'll be passing in front of too.

Watch for overlap. Two people partly obscuring each other as they walk become one shape with four legs in your photo. A post directly behind someone's head grows out of it. Sometimes half a step to the side is enough to separate everyone.

One helpful trick: imagine your subject is completely black, like a silhouette. Can you still see what they're doing? Taking a step, waving an arm, turning their head? Then the shape is clear. A leg slightly apart from the other is much easier to make out than two legs that overlap.

Viewpoint and height

Most photos are taken at eye level. Makes sense. That's where your head is. But it's also why so many photos look alike.

Try getting up higher. A staircase, a bridge, a multi-storey car park, a balcony on a public building. From above, you see the city as a map, as in the photo in this article. People become figures in a pattern. Shadows become long, graphic shapes.

Or get down low. Bend your knees, with your camera just above the pavement. People become bigger, the sky and façades take up more space, and suddenly the street feels very different.

It costs nothing, and you don't need to buy another camera. Just take a few steps. Sometimes up a staircase.

Direction and movement

People in the street are nearly always on their way somewhere. That direction is part of your composition, whether you like it or not.

Someone walking diagonally through your frame gives a photo momentum. Someone coming straight towards you feels more direct, almost confrontational. When someone walks away, the photo often becomes quieter, as though you, the viewer, are being left behind. I also notice that a photo feels different when someone walks from left to right rather than the other way round. Perhaps because that's how we read. I'm not sure, but give it a try.

You can combine that movement with the lines in your setting. A woman walking in the same direction as the lines on a car park reinforces them. Someone walking across them breaks them up. Both can work.

The moment

You can have everything lined up and still miss it. Someone enters the frame a little too early, their leg is in the wrong position, or the bus arrives a second too late. In street photography, you can't separate the moment from the composition.

Henri Cartier-Bresson talked about the decisive moment: the instant when everything in your frame comes together. Form, movement, gesture. Half a second earlier or later, it's a different photo. You can read more about him and why that idea mattered so much in the history of street photography.

Catching a moment like that starts with being ready. If your camera is set up properly, all you need to do is press the shutter. Zone focusing helps, as does a shutter speed fast enough to freeze movement. I explain how I approach this in my article on street photography settings.

Even then, it often takes repetition. People keep walking through the same place in the same way. After a while, you get a feel for when someone will be in the right spot. Then you press the shutter. Sometimes a few times in a row. That's not cheating.

The edges of your frame

Most people look at the centre of the viewfinder. That's where their subject is. But what happens at the edges can make or break a photo.

Half a cyclist on the left. A branch just poking into the frame. A bollard right in the corner. Small things, but they draw attention away from what matters.

Before you press the shutter, take a quick look around the edges too. One lap, as a sort of check. At first, it takes time. After a while, it becomes automatic. If something at the edge isn't right, half a step to the side will often sort out a lot.

You can crop afterwards, of course. But you learn more by getting the framing right on the spot.

Rules are tools

My street photography checklist includes the rule of thirds. You divide your frame into three sections horizontally and three vertically. You place important things on the lines or where they cross. It works. It helps you avoid putting everything in the middle.

It's still a tool, not a law. That's why my checklist immediately adds: break it if that works better. A symmetrical façade with someone right in the centre can be stronger than a neatly divided photo. A horizon at the very bottom can say more than one sitting tidily a third of the way up.

For me, what matters most is knowing why you're doing something. If you know the rules, you can choose to break them. And that shows in your photos.

Learning from your own photos

Most people only look at their best photos when they get home. I'd look at the ones that almost work too. That's often where the lesson is.

Put one of those photos in front of you and look at what isn't right. A messy edge, a background that's too busy, a moment caught just too early. Write it down if that helps. After a few weeks, you'll see patterns. Take those with you next time you're out.

Give it a go

You don't learn composition from an article. You learn it by walking a lot, looking a lot and throwing a lot away. Choose one thing from this article for your next walk. Just lines. Just frames. Or find one spot and wait. You'll learn more by concentrating on one thing than by trying everything at once.

Want to practise this together? In my street photography workshops, we head out into the street early on, and I explain things as we walk, in small groups of no more than five participants. If you'd like to try a different city, there's the masterclass in Paris. The city is full of arcades and covered passages that are practically asking for someone to walk through them. Think of the Palais Royal or the Galerie Vivienne.