Hit The Streets Workshop ft. Fujinon 23mm f2

Back in December last year, I attended a street photography workshop in Perth called Hit The Streets. It was a 3 hour workshop that started off with a couple of talks then a photo walk around Perth. Fellow Perth photographers Seng Mah and Sean Breadsell gave some insightful hints and tips on street photography.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from Sean and Seng:

Street photography can be anything you want it to be – street life, urban architecture, artistic, documentary style
Try to incorporate motion on the streets. This includes people walking, cyclists cycling and cars zooming past.
Find a scene that catches your eye and be patient. Wait for the right subject to walk into the frame or when the light falls into the frame the way you want it to capture the shot.
Play with light and shadows e.g. create silhouettes, form interesting shapes
Learn use manual exposure when shooting on the street. Decide on whether you want motion (i.e. shutter speed) in the shot and how much depth of field (i.e. aperture) you want to capture. Then decide what ISO you need to achieve that shot. Doing this means you’re being intentional with what you’re trying to capture in your frame instead of just snapping away.
Learn to see the moment before it happens
Using lines to lead the eye into the frame or towards the subject makes for a much stronger image. this often means being patient to wait for the subject to be in the right position in the frame.
Use backgrounds and reflections to make the scene or subject more interesting.

During the one hour photo walk I tried to put into practice some of the advice above. I shot in manual exposure for the whole time to instead of my usual aperture priority mode. As it was a sunny afternoon, I set my ISO to 200. Then I varied my aperture and shutter speed depending on what I was shooting. For example if I wanted to capture the motion blur of a car or cyclist, I used an aperture around f8 to f10 and a shutter speed somewhere between 1/50 to 1/100. I also really tried to play around with light and shadow in my shots. I also changed up the angle that I was shooting at, shooting at the hips and close to the ground for a few shots.

It was also the first shoot that I took out my brand new Fujinon 23mm f2 lens that I purchased as part of the Cyber Monday sales back in November. I had a fun time using this during the walk and it’s definitely a great focal length for a walk-around-lens. I did some product shots when I first bought the lens and I thought I would share how the images turned out here as well.