Creating Impact: The Fundamentals of Storytelling in Street Photography

Street photography is not about capturing the reality as it is: it is about, as we say, turning the mundane into the extraordinary. I am not talking about post-processing, but about vision: what you see and feel is what you will want to express. Andunless you commit to see the world differently, you won’t create any meaningful street images.

Seeing the world differently means paying attention to what others will not see by themselves, should it be the simple reflection of a woman in a bus window. It means looking at that city that we know so well, and yet discovering it for the first time, each time you’ll go out on your own. It means being able to see some form of beauty in the most common things, in the most common smiles, in the most common eyes. And it means not only seeing, but feeling – feeling deep inside us that a story is born, right in front of us.

So how do we know when this happens? What should we be looking for exactly? The decision to shoot – and all subsequent decisions around framing, speed, depth of field etc. – is a very intuitive process. Yet, we can train our mind to recognize opportunities, and, in doing so, allowing us to become better photographers. This first chapter provides an overview of what I consider myself to be opportunities in street photography.