There are four things that have helped me like my own street photography more:
Practice.
Looking.
Isolation.
Clarity and flexibility.
The first one is definitely the most important.
Actually, I think the other three probably start working themselves out if you practice enough.
1. PRACTICE
This one’s easy.
Do the thing.
That’s it.
Go outside with the camera and take photographs.
Then do it again.
And again.
As much as possible.
I think practice trumps everything else.
You can study photography. You can think about photography. You can watch videos about photography.
But ultimately you have to make photographs.
That’s where everything starts.
2. LOOK, DON’T JUST SEE
There’s a difference between seeing something and actually looking at it.
Say I walk down the same alley every day.
Most of it stays exactly the same.
Same cars.
Same air-conditioning units.
Same light fixtures.
Same telephone poles.
Same buildings.
After a while, I stop noticing these things because I’ve seen them a thousand times.
But that’s seeing.
Looking is different.
Looking means investigating further.
I might see this crashed car every day, but today I stop.
I look at the radiator.
I move closer.
I look at the individual pieces.
I put the camera into macro mode.
I crop.
Suddenly this thing I’ve walked past a hundred times becomes an entirely different world.
There’s a photograph here.
There’s another photograph over here.
Maybe I make 50 photographs of this one car.
That’s what I mean by looking.
Investigate what everyone else is seeing.
Investigate it obsessively.
Keep looking until you open up a new reality for yourself.
That’s one of the things I love most about photography.
Ordinary things stop being ordinary when you really start paying attention.
3. ISOLATE YOURSELF FROM THE NOISE
When I say isolation, I don’t mean physically isolating yourself.
This is street photography.
I’m outside.
I’m around people.
I still photograph people.
I’m talking about mental isolation.
Isolation from distraction.
Isolation from all the outside noise constantly telling you what photography is supposed to look like.
Social media.
YouTube.
Trends.
Algorithms.
Other photographers.
Everybody else’s opinions.
All that stuff can slowly creep into your work.
And eventually you might not even know why you’re photographing something anymore.
Do you actually like it?
Or have you simply absorbed the idea that this is what a good photograph is supposed to look like?
That’s why I’ve been trying to reduce some of that noise.
I want enough space in my own head to figure out what I actually like.
That’s the isolation I’m talking about.
4. CLARITY AND FLEXIBILITY
Clarity is knowing what you like.
Sounds easy.
I don’t think it is.
For a long time, I photographed a lot of fleeting moments because I thought that’s what good street photography was supposed to be.
And I still enjoy making those photographs.
But eventually I realized something.
Some of what I thought I liked was really what I’d been told to like.
That’s where clarity comes in.
What do I actually want to photograph?
What photographs do I actually enjoy making?
What photographs do I enjoy looking at afterward?
Once you start figuring that out, go HAM on it.
Make those photographs.
Don’t worry about whether they fit somebody else’s definition of street photography.
But there’s another part to this.
Flexibility.
Because what I like today might not be what I like a year from now.
It might not even be what I like next week.
So I want clarity without becoming rigid.
I want to know what I’m interested in right now while remaining open to changing my mind.
LOOK AT THE PIZZA
Here’s a perfect example of how all this starts working together.
There’s a piece of pizza on the ground.
Most people see trash.
It’s a slice of pizza.
That’s it.
But look closer.
The texture on the pizza almost matches the texture of the pavement.
The little burnt spots match what’s happening on the ground.
That’s interesting.
Now I’m investigating it.
I’m moving around.
I’m trying different angles.
I’m making photographs.
Something completely ordinary became interesting because I stopped seeing it as “pizza on the ground” and actually looked at it.
That’s the entire process happening right there.
THEORY CAN HELP, BUT BE CAREFUL
I still think theory can be useful.
Other photographers can teach you things.
Books can give you ideas.
Videos can make you think differently.
But I’ve learned to be careful.
A photographer can be massively successful and still have an approach that doesn’t apply to me.
They might make completely different work.
They might have a completely different workflow.
Their theory might be great for them and terrible for me.
That’s why I always come back to practice.
Theory should support the practice.
It shouldn’t prevent the practice.
If I’m thinking so much about photography that I stop making photographs, something has gone wrong.
KEEP DOING THE THING
So these are the four things that have helped me:
Practice.
Look instead of merely seeing.
Isolate yourself from unnecessary distractions.
Develop clarity about what you like while staying flexible enough to change.
And underneath all four of them is practice.
Because I think if you keep doing the thing, a lot of the other stuff eventually starts working itself out.
You learn to look because you’re constantly looking.
You start recognizing distractions because you’ve spent enough time making your own work.
You develop clarity because you’ve made enough photographs to notice what you keep returning to.
And flexibility comes from realizing that none of this is permanent.
My ideas might change tomorrow.
That’s fine.
I’ll go out tomorrow and make more photographs.
Practice.
Look.
Pay attention.
Figure out what you like.
Stay flexible.
Then do it again.