Understanding Street Photography: An Introduction to Shooting Compelling Images on the Street

by Bryan Peterson

Discover the secrets to mastering street photography—from city streets to country roads and the alleyways in between—from an acclaimed international photographer, teacher, and bestselling author.Street photography offers treasured moments at almost every turn, if you know where to look. In Understanding Street Photography, readers will learn the techniques for capturing brilliant scenes, including images taken around the globe, from the vibrant streets of Varanasi, India, to the crowded walkways of the Charles Bridge in Prague, and so many other corners of the world. In this master class, street photography is defined as images that convey evidence of human interaction, whether that’s a striking cityscape, an image of rush-hour foot traffic, the remains of a half-eaten sandwich, or a pedestrian portrait. Along the way, Bryan Peterson shares 120 “mini diaries”: the story behind each image; the thought process; the arrangement of the composition; the psychology of the colors; and the lens, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO for readers to replicate his work. Professional and aspiring photographers alike will learn how to produce posed and candid compositions, capture light and movement, work with shadows, weather, and architecture, and hone your craft. Through lessons, exercises, and anecdotes, Peterson shares his best tips for capturing the unpredictable world of urban life in motion.

Genres: Photography

191 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2022

About the author

Bryan F. Peterson has been a full-time commercial photographer since 1981, shooting assignments all over the world for many of the Fortune 500 companies, including Kodak, UPS, and American Expiress. He is also a contract stock photographer for Corbis and Getty. He has been a contributing editor at Outdoor Photographer Magazine and is currently a contributing editor at Popular Photography and Imaging Magazine. Within the photographic community, he is most noted as the author/photographer of four best selling “how-to” photography books, Understanding Exposure, Understanding Shutter Speed, Learning to See Creatively and Beyond Portraits, with two new books due out in the spring of 2009, Understanding Close-up Photography and The Field Guide to Photography. He is also the founder and one of the instructors at the world’s number one on-line photography school, www.ppsop.net.

Reviews

[Maxime · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is well organized, along themes like motion, scale, pattern, color, candid vs posed, etc. Almost every page is an image with a backstory and a small lesson, which kept the reading interesting. I think there are some good lessons in this book for beginners, but if you are more advanced, then, as the title might suggest, this book is not for you.

There are, however, quite a few things that I disliked about this book.

First, from a teaching perspective, the author misses out on many ways to simplify things for beginners. Some of the bigger omissions are editing RAW images, and using semi-automatic modes such as aperture/shutter/ISO priority settings. I understand that this wasn't meant to be a guide to Lightroom or to a specific camera system, but I do think these are useful tools for taking mental load off of beginners, who can defer some of the decisions to the camera or until the editing process. Having a discussion of when automatic settings should be overridden would have been wonderful, but alas, no such luck. Instead, the author insists over many pages on setting white balance in-camera, on setting ISO, shutter AND aperture manually, and so on. It felt a little bit like the author is plagued by the curse of knowledge, or perhaps the curser of habit. This book was published in 2022, but on a technical level, it feels grounded in 2002 (or perhaps more generously 2012, but you get the point).

Another thing that I really disliked about this book was some of the specific backstories. For most pictures, the author describes what he had to do to get the shot. One of these backstories includes yelling at people taking part in a religious celebration to get one person to turn around, basically cause it'll "look good on the gram" (a characterization that I think the author, who doesn't really strike me as a #instagrammer, would strongly dislike, but I think it's essentially what's happening). In all fairness the author does admit that this was a mistake and that he wouldn't do it again, but I still found the full two-page spread dedicated to this photo, as the introduction to a chapter called "candid photos" to boot, to be somewhat over the top. Joel Meyerowitz warned against "bruising" a scene, but this is an example of a composition that has taken a proper beating.

How I wish the author would've made this a teaching moment and said: don't make my mistake! I regret it! Look at what it did to the photo, it broke the candidness, the realism, the charm! It wasn't worth it! But no, the author's explanation comes across as "it wasn't the best thing and I wouldn't do it again, but it was worth it." A shame, really.

Then, finally, the photos themselves. I am leaving this for last, as I recognize that this criticism is the most subjective so far. But I found that, while some shots were very compelling to me (the happy kid in the red plastic chair, the colorful walls in Agra, the portraits in the windows), I found some to be tacky beyond belief (the green wigs in front of the Eiffel tower, the jump in front of the Eiffel tower, his photography student doing a bizarre pose in front of the art at La Defense in Paris... come to think of it, all the shots in France, for some reason). I sometimes found it hard to believe that it was the same person behind those photographs. But again, I want to acknowledge how much of that is up to personal taste, and I entirely accept that others may disagree with this.

[Vivek Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read “Understanding Flash Photography” from the same author and had found that book quite insightful. Based on my prior experience, I decided to pick this book as my first ever book on street photography, just to get a hang of what it is like to shoot on streets. Before I read this book, I never thought I will pursue street photography seriously, but this book definitely changed my whole perspective towards this genre. The introductory part of this book made me realize how much I have been enjoying this genre for a long time with random smartphone clicks and irresistible urge to capture anything beautiful that I come across.

The book is, thankfully, light on text and full of illustrative examples. No wonder, I could finish it in less than ten days. I must say the time and energy invested in reading this book was totally worth it, as I got to learn many simple things that I thought I knew, but had never implemented or paid adequate attention to, for stunning results. This is not a book on “how to do street photography” but a book on “what to watch out for when you do street photography”. The author gives you many examples from his photography work to elaborate and explain his ideas and concepts. Bryan’s photographs of India will make you believe that you need not go to any other country or big city to do street photography. You can find the photographic gold hidden all around you. On a side note, I was also happy to notice Indian street photographer, Mr. Vineet Vohra‘s name in this book for his amazing work. However, anyone already pursuing street photography as a genre for some time, may find many parts of this book familiar and already well known. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly worthwhile to grab this book and see for yourself, what is still missing from your street photography work.

[Jing · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s got some good information about working with the holy trinity of photography — aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. There’s a cursory discussion of different techniques of photography. The stories are fine but occasionally extremely lacking in self reflection. My biggest issue with it is that’s it’s neither an introduction level book on photography nor an in-depth book. There’s no basic explanation of the mechanics of the holy trinity and there’s no deep exploration of any specific technique other than do this. At this point I think I’m better off with a photography book that doesn’t just focus on one photographer.

[Renu Chamarty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peterson is a wonderful photographer, and has a wonderfully creative eye for the abstract - it was a blast going through all the great pictures he's taken of what most of us would pass off as the mundanity of life on the streets. There's a lot to learn here about the *philosophy* of street photography - the patience, the eye for detail and the ability to divine beauty out of mundanity. However, as a novice photographer, I struggled to put to action some of Peterson's advice on the technicalities of taking photos. I understand that he recommends that we read a bunch of his previous books before tackling this one - maybe I'll do that sometime.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent primer on the subject; a very nuts-and-bolts approach to street photography with plenty of helpful material to get you going; did not like it as much as Think Like a Street Photographer: How to Think Like a Street Photographer but it comes close.

[Dan Duplessis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights on how to go from an rookie with a DSLR to taking some quality photos that have proper adjustments for lighting and make use of interesting backgrounds and people. I would consider most books by this author a good starting point on specific photography genres. Fortunate for me I was able to apply the techniques immediately because I read the whole thing in 4 hours on a flight from Chicago to Seattle for Vacation and the very next day was taking quality shots.

[Frieda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is divided into different aspects for effective street photography. However, it read more like the author's experiences with street photography and listed settings that he used for various photos printed in the book. It wasn't so much a guide. I reviewed his photographs for inspiration and did not read much of the text. For those serious about getting into street photography and are interested in developing an eye for the street, this book is not for you.

[zatopiona.w.slowach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ma ciekawe zdjęcia i ich opisy, była to jedyna interesująca mnie rzecz w tej książce. Jestem po pierwszym roku technikum fotograficznego i ta książka niestety nie dała mi niczego nowego. Będzie dobra dla początkujących nie mających wogule pojęcia o fotografii.

[colin siqueira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Comprehensive explanations and exposure settings for an interesting selection of photos. An informative book for any photographer. Very well put together.

[Andre Dargains · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book with tips and tricks for street photography. Each page has a photo, its story and a lesson to be learned. A must for beginners and pros!

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I borrowed this from the library solely to look at the pictures. I did find myself looking at the details of some of the pictures: "Pride in Paris"; The upside down picture; The rusty truck;

[Anatolii · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it’s a decent read, compared to the author’s other works, it doesn’t offer much in the way of fresh information or new ideas.