Digital Photography School Projects - City Streets Assignment

Learning to shoot in the environs of busy city streets is a fantastic way of taking your photography to another level. The busyness and hustle n bustle make it the perfect place to practise your photography. All the elements of a great photograph can be found on the busy city streets.

The Brief

I want you to go out on the streets a city, town or village at a time when it's at its busiest. What you want achieve is capture the essence of the city or town, essentially its heartbeat. Your images must reflect the location. Use both wide angle lens and long lens or zoom. If it's a compact then the widest zoom setting and then the longest. Using the widest angle capture the essence of the scene and then with the longest focal length isolate parts of the image to reflect intimacy.

So get on to the streets before you continue reading through this article. Capture the life and vibrancy of the setting.

You're not on the streets yet? Not quite confident enough to know what you are doing? No problem. Let's take a look at a few points that will help you to gain a little more confidence in what you should be doing. Here are some points to look out for.

1. Composition

Look for strong compositions. Balanced images with subjects placed on the two thirds intersections. Google rule of thirds if you aren't sure. Look also for strong lines such as rows of buildings, fences or pavements. These will lead you into the scene to a focal point.

2. Patterns

The city vibrancy can appear to be chaotic but look for patterns in the chaos. Isolate them by getting in close or zooming in. What you are looking for is rhythm and repetition. Paving or slatted fences, things that are repeated.

3. Movement

There is so much movement in a busy scene but the key is reflecting. Slow down your shutter speed and blur the movement in your photos slightly. You'll find people's arms and legs blurred but the rest of their body in focus. This will give you the appearance of movement.

4. Colour

Photographing colour in a city scene is so exciting. There is just so much of it and the vibrancy of the city is most often reflected through colour. Look for bold, saturated colours that are vivid and evoke feeling or emotion. Capture strong colours contrasted against other colours.

5. Framing

It is just so easy to frame subjects in a busy city scene. There are doorways, windows, arches and trees together with colour and bold backgrounds. All allowing you to isolate your subjects. Look for bold subjects against saturated coloured backgrounds. You want to make the subject stand out.

6. Lines

Strong horizontals and bold verticals together with defined diagonals all add a dynamic element to your photos. Lines lead the eye and you can place subjects on focal points guided there by strong lines. Converging parallels like train tracks take the eye to another place disappearing into the distance.

So, go out now and find the busiest place in your location and shoot to your heart's content. Go wild and create images of beauty and document life in the busy city streets.