On the street, techniques for street photography

What do you look at when you walk down the street? The book starts with that question, before the camera comes into it. After that come focusing, light, composition and timing, among other things, with attention to getting close and movement. In the focusing chapter, for example, you read about zone focus, estimating distances and the hyperfocal distance. Those are ideas you may want to sit down for. That is why there are also basic settings on one page at the front: a starting point, with the explanation in the chapters and the moments when you can depart from it.

Every chapter ends with an assignment. My suggestion is to go outside after reading and do that assignment first, before you read on. Reading fourteen chapters in a row is fine too, of course. You will just mostly have read a lot. At the back there’s a thirty-day programme, with twenty minutes of practice a day. It gives practice a fixed place, for when you want to make street photography a habit.

The book also goes beyond pressing the shutter: choosing subjects, bringing photographs together in a series and post-processing each get their own chapter. Law and respect are covered too, with general information about what is allowed. That isn’t legal advice. Where I describe my own choices, I say so. You are welcome to do it differently; those choices of your own are part of the craft.