Recently, I found a video by Faizal Westcott and a blog post on the subject of street photography anxiety. As I thought he did a really good video and post on this topic so I wanted to share it here with you.
The blog post is here:
OVERCOME STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ANXIETY
and his first video on this subject is here:
Overcoming anxiety is hard.
Anything worth doing can be hard. Street photography is not an easy genre of photography. It takes time to get comfortable being out side on the streets raising ones camera to make an image.
Something that I remember Martin Parr once saying to a question about him making images in public places. When questioned about did you take my photo. His response to this is no, I made my photo. You might just happen to be in it but it is my photo. I know this can come across as arrogant. However, I also see the point of his comment. As he is a photographer with a distinctive style and he is most definitely making his image. Yet this is something we often do not consider. We are all making our own images.
CCTV exists just about everywhere in the UK, we have what I am told is the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world and yet no one ever seems to worry about them. Whereas street photographers get concerned about what other think of them making images. This is okay as we should consider others when making images. I also think we have an obligation to future selves and the people who come after us to make images of life as it is being lived in public places as these become the historical record of the time that we live in. This for me is the biggest motivator for making street photography images and where social documentary photography joins street photography in defining our times.
The legendary Robert Frank in action.
I love this trick. Robert Frank is one of our Hero’s of Street Photography. Here he is doing the classic trick of looking like he does not know what he is doing with his ungainly camera. Sometimes the old tricks work best for getting the images that you want to make.
Wear your camera, it helps.
One thing I do to make it easier to get images, is I wear my camera across my body, so it is easy to just use it. I also find that if I walk along a street, taking lots of photos, people tend to leave me alone. As I am not just focusing on them, if I do happen to point my camera at them, while making many images.
You have only yourself, holding you back from making images, so go out and get working with your camera. You will never know what you come back with, until you do.
Let us know in the comments below what trick and techniques you use to overcome your fear, hesitancy, discomfort when making images.
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