From single street photos to a series: building a project

There’s a folder on your hard drive full of street photos you’re fairly pleased with. A man in a hat, a shadow on a wall, someone just missing the tram. All separate moments. It feels a bit like a pile of football stickers without an album.

That album is a series. Building a street photography series changes how you head out with your camera. You’re looking for a good photo that also fits something you’re already working on. That sounds restrictive, but in practice it tends to do the opposite.

In this article, I’ll walk you through how individual photos become a series, and how that sometimes grows into a project.

• A series or a project?
• Why a series keeps you motivated
• Start with a keyword
• Ideas for a series
• Look through your archive first
• Set yourself a few rules
• Time and patience
• Choosing photos and deciding the order
• How many photos?
• A title
• When is a series finished?
• Sharing your series
• A little nudge

A series or a project?

Those two words often get used interchangeably. No great problem, but I find it useful to separate them for a moment.

A series is a group of photos with something in common. People in doorways. Red coats. People sitting on benches, waiting. The connection is usually visible: you see the photos next to each other and understand why they belong together.

A project goes a step further. There’s a question or a story behind it. With those people in doorways, for example, you might be trying to say something about how people move in and out of a city, about thresholds, about the transition between inside and outside. A project can consist of one series, or several series that tell a story together.

It usually starts with a series. Only after a while do you notice whether there’s more to it. Sometimes there is. Sometimes it stays a nice set of photos. Both are fine.

Why a series keeps you motivated

Street photography can be fairly thankless. You walk for hours, see all sorts of things and come home with a memory card full of photos that are almost good. I wrote about that feeling in the struggle that is street photography.

A series changes that a little. Suddenly there are small moments of happiness in your photography. You see something and know straight away that it fits your series. At home, you add the photo to the others and it works. Those moments are addictive. I’ve written about this before in my article on making series.

A series also gives you a reason to leave the house on days when you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to take the photo of the year. You just need to find one more to add.

When I gave a talk on street photography at Fotocafé West Brabant in May 2025, to 165 people, I included a section on series for the first time. It’s a subject I like sharing. I think it helps a lot of photographers find a connection between photos that would otherwise remain a collection of separate shots.

"I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed."

Garry Winogrand

I like that quote in relation to series, too. You don’t know at the start what your series will look like. You find out by taking photographs.

Start with a keyword

For me, a series almost always starts with a word. We work that way in my conceptual street photography workshop, too. You choose a keyword, such as Solitude, Interaction, Reflection or Rhythm. You use that word as a filter for how you look.

A keyword gives you a clear direction while leaving things open. Solitude could mean a man alone in a square, but also a single chair on a café terrace, or someone standing in a busy crowd, lost in their own thoughts. The word guides your eye without telling you what you have to find.

Without that filter, you look at everything and barely see anything. With a word in your head, you suddenly notice things you would otherwise have walked past. You’ll find more ideas for working this way in 25 tips for conceptual street photography.

Don’t choose something too narrow. Red umbrellas make a fun assignment for an afternoon, but you won’t build a project around them. Too broad doesn’t work either. People isn’t a keyword. That’s just street photography.

You can try this out in a single day. In the workshop, we walk through Nijmegen, Utrecht, Amsterdam or Antwerp with a maximum of five participants. I explain things as we go. Afterwards, you send in your photos and receive feedback by email. You usually won’t have a complete series after a day like that. But you will have a first handful of photos and a way of looking that you can keep working with.

Write your keyword down somewhere. On your phone, on a scrap of paper in your camera bag, wherever. It sounds childish, but three weeks later you really won’t remember exactly what you were working on otherwise.

Ideas for a series

Sometimes you just need a nudge. In my article on series, I mentioned a few ideas that I think work well:

• people stepping inside or outside somewhere
• people framed by things such as doors and windows
• nature among the concrete
• people whose faces you can’t see
• animals on the street
• differences between young and old

I’d like to add a few:

• people waiting for a bus, a friend or nothing in particular
• hands, and what people are holding
• people’s shadows rather than the people themselves
• the city after dark, with only artificial light
• people and their phones
• one street or one square, over and over again

The photo accompanying this article, Waiting, could easily fit into that series of people waiting. A woman beneath the arcades of the Palais Royal, and nothing much else happening. That’s exactly what makes it interesting.

That last idea on the list, returning to the same place, is often underestimated. When you know a place well, you see differences a tourist would never notice. For me, that’s Nijmegen city centre, which I know like the back of my hand. A series about one place forces you to look more closely. After a few visits, you’ve already taken all the obvious photos.

An idea for a series doesn’t have to be original, by the way. People in doorways have been photographed thousands of times. You only find out how you’ll do it once you get going.

Torn between two ideas? Try working on both for a few weeks. You’ll soon notice which one you keep seeing on the street and which you forget as soon as you leave the house. The first is your series. The second was just a nice thought you had on the sofa.

Look through your archive first

Once you have an idea in mind, it’s worth looking back first. There’s a good chance you’ve been working on a series for years without realising it.

Go through your photos from the past few years and look for things that keep coming back. Do you often photograph people from behind? Do you see reflections everywhere? Are you always waiting by the same sort of walls? That tells you something about what catches your eye.

Put what you find together in a separate folder or an album in your editing software. I use Capture One, but you can do this in any program. Five photos with something in common are already the start of a series. If you find twenty, you might be further along than you thought.

This is also a good moment to be honest. Not every photo that fits your theme is good enough. A series is only as strong as its weakest photo.

Set yourself a few rules

A series becomes stronger when the photos belong together both in subject matter and visually. A few rules help with that.

Choose black and white or colour, for example, and stick with it. A series that jumps between the two feels disjointed. You can read about making that choice in street photography in black and white or colour.

Work with one focal length. That gives all your photos the same perspective and the same distance from your subject. You can read about finding a focal length that suits you in which camera and lens to use for street photography. My Fujifilm X100V has a fixed lens and is almost an extension of my arm. That’s one less decision to make.

You can also set a rule about light or time of day. Only in harsh midday light, or only after sunset. That gives a series a recognisable atmosphere. I wrote about hard shadows in photographing light and shadow on the street. For the evening, there’s street photography after dark.

Composition can be a rule, too. Always shooting from above, or always showing a small figure in a large space. You’ll find advice on working with lines, layers and frames in composition in street photography.

A rule isn’t a law. If a photo breaks the rule and makes the series better for it, it can go in. Then it’s a choice, not an accident.

I wouldn’t start with ten rules at once, though. One or two is enough. The rest will follow naturally, because after a while you notice what works.

Time and patience

You won’t make a good series in a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes the beginnings of one, but rarely the whole thing.

Expect it to take months, sometimes years. That might sound discouraging, but a series can simply be something you keep working on as you go. You don’t have to work on it every day. The idea is there in the back of your mind. When you see something that fits, you recognise it.

It helps to have your technique sorted so you don’t have to think about it when the moment comes. With the right settings for street photography, you’re free to concentrate on looking. If you find it difficult to get close to the people you need for your series, finding the courage to photograph on the street may help.

There’s almost always a point when you think: this is going nowhere. Your series seems dull, or you feel you’ve already taken all the photos. That’s part of it. Put it aside and look again a few weeks later. Often, you suddenly see what you do have and what’s still missing.

Go back to the same places, too. In street photography, something different happens on the same corner every day. There’s a reason it’s among my street photography tips. It applies twice over when you’re working on a series.

Choosing photos and deciding the order

This is the part many photographers dread, and I understand why. You have to let go of photos you’re attached to.

Start with a broad selection. Gather all the contenders, ideally as prints on a table or the floor. On a screen, you see photos one at a time. On a table, you see them next to each other. That makes a big difference. How photos work alongside each other is the whole point of a series.

First, remove the photos that fall just short, technically or in what they show. Then it gets harder. Sometimes a photo is strong on its own but pulls the series in the wrong direction. That one can come out, too. Keep it. It might fit into something else later.

Then there’s the order. A series is a sequence, not a pile. The first photo sets the tone. Choose one that makes it clear straight away what the series is about. The last photo stays with the viewer. It needs to bring something to a close or leave a question open.

In between, you’re looking for rhythm. Alternate busy photos with quieter ones. Pay attention to how one photo leads into the next: a line that continues, or a colour that appears again. It’s a bit like putting together an album of music. Not every track can be a hit, and it doesn’t have to be.

Ask someone else to have a look. An outsider will spot the photo that doesn’t belong more quickly, because they don’t know the story behind it. You can also show your work and ask for feedback on straatfotografie.nl, the community I run.

How many photos?

There’s no fixed rule. I use eight to twelve photos as a rough guide.

Fewer than eight can soon feel like a handful of separate photos that happen to look alike. With more than twelve, there’s a good chance repetition will creep in. Or a few weaker photos will slip through just to make up the numbers.

A series for a photobook or a large exhibition can, of course, be longer. But even then, I’d rather have ten photos that all work than twenty with five I feel I need to explain.

If you’re unsure about a photo, the answer is usually: leave it out.

A title

A title might seem like a small detail, but it does a lot. A good title gives the viewer a direction without explaining everything.

Keep it short. One word can be enough, just as the photo accompanying this article is simply called Waiting. Your keyword often makes a perfectly good working title. It might change along the way. That’s fine.

What I find less effective are titles that tell you exactly what you’re looking at. If your series is about people in doorways, it doesn’t need to be called People in Doorways. Leave something for the viewer to work out.

When is a series finished?

There’s no single answer. Some series remain open for years. You add something every now and then. Fine, as long as that doesn’t become an excuse never to show anything.

A practical test: if, over the past few months, you’ve only been adding photos that resemble what’s already there, you’re probably finished. Or at least finished with this version. A new photo needs to add something, even if it’s just different light. If that’s no longer happening, it isn’t a failure. It’s time to finish.

Another test is a deadline. An exhibition, or an evening when you’re showing your work at your photography club. Nothing gets a series finished quite as quickly as a date it has to be ready by. That’s as true of photography as it is of your tax return.

Finishing doesn’t mean you can never look at it again, by the way. You can always revisit a series in a few years. Sometimes that’s when you finally see what it was.

Sharing your series

A series that only exists on your hard drive is a bit like that football sticker album sitting in a drawer. Nice for you, but it really comes into its own when someone else leafs through it.

A zine is an accessible way to start. A small booklet you make yourself, featuring your series, in a small print run. It forces you to make decisions about sequence and format. And you have something in your hands. That feels different from a folder on your computer.

An exhibition can start small, too. A library or a coffee shop is enough. When publishing, do give some thought to the rights of the people in your photos. Taking a photo is different from showing it, as I explain in are you allowed to photograph people on the street?.

Online is an option too, of course. Show the series as a whole, in the order you’ve chosen. Twelve separate posts spread over three months soon become that pile of loose stickers again.

You can also have a single photo from your series printed. A good print shows details that disappear on a screen. The photo accompanying this article is available as a fine art print of Waiting. You’ll find other work among my fine art prints.

And then there’s the photobook. That’s the biggest step, but also the most rewarding. My own photobook, The Observer, is an English-language book of street photographs. A book brings together everything this article covers: choosing photos, deciding the order, finding a title and having the nerve to say: this is it.

A little nudge

Sometimes it helps to step outside your usual surroundings. In a city you don’t know, you look differently. Everything is new. That means you see patterns you no longer notice at home.

Two days in an unfamiliar city can be a good starting point for a new series. That’s exactly what REFRESH is: a two-day masterclass in Paris or London, with a maximum of five participants. On the Paris masterclass, our walks take us past the Palais Royal, where the photo accompanying this article was taken, and through the covered passages, among other places. You arrange your own travel and accommodation.

Already further along and mainly looking to develop your own style? Then Streetwise is a better fit. It’s an in-depth email programme about your own style. I think it fits well with working on a series. A set of photos often shows how you see things more clearly than a single photo does.

Would you rather start with a day in the Netherlands or Belgium? You’ll find all the workshops and masterclasses together on the street photography workshops page.

And with the festive season coming up, a day or two on the street with a camera makes a lovely gift, too. There’s a workshop gift voucher and a REFRESH gift voucher.

Start with a word. See what happens. The rest will follow, though it usually takes longer than you’d hoped.