First Street Photography session – June 2025

Yesterday I went to Cambridge and spent a couple of hours practicing street photography, which is something I’ve never really done before.

Inspiration and Reasoning

I’ve wanted to try out street photography for a long time, years really, but I’ve always felt too nervous and anxious to just photograph people in the street in case someone challenged me or complained. I’m not by nature a person who deals well with confrontation, so the thought of being challenged in the street made me not try the process.

However, there was still a desire to try it because there is an ever-changing studio of subjects out on every street in the country, so if I could overcome my nerves I would be able to walk into any town or city and have the option to take good photos on every street corner.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos on street photography techniques, and I discovered a process called, ‘shooting from the hip’. As many will know, this involves taking photos with the camera held at waist or chest height and either using the screen to compose the photo, or in some cases, not using a viewfinder at all but just learning to point the camera in the right direction and capture the photo without composing. Using this technique, it’s possible to just look as if you are checking some settings on the camera rather than actually taking photos.

Of course, for the anxious photographers amongst us, this sounds a great way to get into taking photographs in the street without the immediate danger of being challenged.

Camera and lens used for Street Photography

I’ve just recently upgraded my camera from a Fuji X-T1 which I bought in 2016, to a used Fuji X-T4, but oddly I didn’t take the X-T4 with me to Cambridge, I used the old camera instead. The reason for this is that the X-T1 has a screen that can be tilted for use from above or below the camera, whereas the X-T4 has a fully articulated screen. I felt the tilting screen would be more useful when using the camera at waist level.

The lens I fitted was a Fuji 27mm f/2.8 pancake lens, which I’ve had since I bought the camera. Although ideally I would rather have used a wider lens, the only other prime lens I have is a Samyang AF 12mm which is a more bulky lens and I wanted to keep the camera small, light and unobtrusive.

My Cambridge Street Photography session

So I ventured onto the streets in Cambridge and gave the process a try.

I set the camera to use a black & white film simulation, so the screen would give me a black & white preview, set the shutter to electronic shutter for silent operation, and put the camera in Program mode, so the exposure would be handled automatically. I was going to be concentrating on not being discovered, so I didn’t want to think about any camera settings.

Then I started walking through the streets, pointing the camera at anything I found interesting and gently pressing the shutter as the subject was in the display. I wouldn’t say any of the shots were ‘framed’ or ‘composed’. I was basically just trying to get used to taking photos without anyone noticing me.

And a strange thing happened – as I took more photos, I got less and less worried about being discovered and started to enjoy the process. Instead of worrying about being discovered, I started to look for subjects and how I should frame them.

Now I know it will take years of practice before I could take excellent photos on the street – the photos in the gallery below are what I consider to be the best photos I took, and none of them are actually good photos, but the point is I managed to take images with real people in the frame and I didn’t disturb anyone or get challenged in any way.

Gallery of Street Photography Photos

The photos below are my pick of the photos I took and ordered in the order I took them.

So – What did I learn?

I had a lot of fun during the couple of hours my wife and I walked around Cambridge. It was a hot day with continuous sun and I took about 200 photos, but what did I learn from the experience?

Well, I found that after a period of time I stopped worrying so much about being challenged and started to relax more. I found that the majority of people didn’t notice that I had a camera at all and were just going about their business and involved in their day-to-day activities.

Shooting from the hip gives an interesting perspective to the photos, but there were many occasions when I missed the heads of people because the camera was pointing straight. Possibly using a wider angle lens would help with this.

I found one occasion when we stopped for lunch and sat on a raised curb, and I was using the camera from a low position across a wide square when I suddenly realised that it could look as if I was trying to take inappropriate images.

This made me realise that I needed to be careful – it’s one thing to be accused of taking images of people on the street when you are walking amongst them, but to be accused of trying to take inappropriate images would be something at an entirely different level.

Overall, I was pleased with the pictures I took – as I said above, I don’t think any of them classify as good street photography images, but they show a progression as my confidence increased and it certainly a process that could lead to me taking better photos and increasing my confidence, perhaps to the level where I could start taking photos in the street without having to pretend I’m not.