Street Photography: The Importance of Practice by Neil Milton

Written by Neil Milton

The first time I remember hearing the joke, I was on the second floor of a block of flats in the Cairnhill area of Airdrie. A young boy, sitting warming in front of a 3-bar fire.

With the smell of plain bread toast in the air, I told my gran that I wanted to be a singer. She asked me if I knew how to get to Carnegie Hall. I didn’t know what a Carnegie Hall was. Perhaps it was in Edinburgh, I remember suggesting. To a bemused pre-teen, she replied practice, practice, practice.

Huh?

Later in life, I got the joke, but I feel it is always better when subverted. In Demetri Martin’s telling, it’s practice, practice, practice… then make a left.

Practice makes perfect, so we’re told. As a lazy teen playing noisy guitar, I rebelled against sensible notions as, oh, being good with the instrument. No need to practice. Then, later in life when I began to play the piano, times had changed. I understood the importance of practice, compounded by the indisputable fact that I wasn’t particularly good.

Making an Effort

Despite what some may say, street photography is not easy, and it takes years of determined, deliberate practice to make it look like it may be. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s quote that your first 10,000 photographs are your worst sits in eerie similarity to Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that one needs 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery.

Weathered street photographers know that in any given year, only a handful of photographs made will be special. I manage 10 to 15 true keepers each year, and if I am lucky, one of them will be a truly special frame. Of course, I achieve nothing if my camera sits on my desk, and I’m indoors playing the latest Death Stranding video game.

To practice street photography, one must walk out of the apartment door and become immersed in the world found there. Here, the street photographer learns by doing, by walking the many kilometers, wearing down the soles of the shoes, and by training the eye to see, and the reflex to react.

Commit to the practice of street photography and, whether rain or shine, throw the camera over a shoulder and get out there.

Building Street Photography Experience

A musical instrument is practiced before performance, whether alone or with a group. Issues are ironed out before taking to the stage. In street photography, the practice is done on the run. As I wrote about in my last article, all perceived failures can be treated as the product of practice.

To critically evaluate the pictures after a day out photographing is a crucial way to learn what went wrong and to find the best strategies to correct it the next time. If a poor composition was chosen, how might it have been improved? If timing was off, would a quicker reaction or a delay have made for a better photograph? Was the shutter speed too slow? Was the aperture too wide?

Getting Comfortable with Your Camera & Exploring New Horizons

With practice and review, such things become second nature, and some choices can be left to muscle memory. With repeated practice, the camera can become an extension of the photographer. Natural in hand and when brought to the eye – familiar and used without breaking concentration.

Finding this comfort with the camera is made easier when beginning by choosing one camera and one fixed focal length. Familiarity with a camera avoids any fruitless search for dials or settings in the heat of the moment. Sticking to one focal length, the boundaries of the frame become instinctive. Even without the camera, I can intuit a 50mm frame.

As those rhetorical 10,000 worst photographs are slowly spent, so much can be learned by experimenting and practicing on the street. Take chances, make bad photographs, if only to see the limits, or lack thereof, of a certain idea. There is no substitute for being present, with an innate curiosity watching life unfold and releasing the shutter when something feels interesting.

Though it can be tempting to stick to areas of the city where success has been found, overcome that temptation to push outside the comfort zone and mix those happy hunting grounds with new horizons.

Growing Confidence & Building Momentum

A crowd scene on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street. In sudden rain, a lady with a hood up walks past a newspaper seller whose board reads “53M Pounds Bid to Stop Floods.” In the background, there is a street sign reading “Bath Street.”

A vital benefit of practice I have found is growing confidence that pushes me out of periods of impostor syndrome. I have some experience, and yet, I still find myself struggling with the fear of not being good enough, or a fear of confrontation. These anxieties are more pronounced when I have had a longer break from making photographs.

After some afternoons out in the city, pushing myself to stretch the elastic of my comfort zone, I find the practice has given me back the confidence that leaked out, like the air from a bicycle tire.

It would be silly to imagine that a camera can be left on the shelf for months, and then the rusty street photographer can hit the ground running. With some experience and a hiatus of over a decade, I can say without fear of contradiction that this isn’t the case. Street photography does take some figurative warming up. I would say it took about a year for me to exceed the level I had left behind before moving to Poland.

In microcosm, this works in much the same way on a daily basis. While it may happen, I don’t expect to make my best photographs immediately upon leaving the flat. It can take some time to build momentum and to find the rhythms of the street. Some days it is easier than others. One afternoon it may be chaotic, on another it can be prosaic. Finding and matching that pace can take a little practice.

Directions?

This feels like a lot to return to the simple truism that to get to Carnegie Hall, it takes practice.

Or in the case of street photography, we can think of the alliterative words of Magnum photographer, Bruce Davidson when he described what it takes to make a great photograph: Passion, persistence, patience, and, I would add, practice.

Thank you so much, Neil! Neil is a regular contributor here at Shoot It With Film, and you can check out his other articles here, such as Street Photography Mistakes I’ve Made and What You Can Learn from Them and 5 Exercises to Improve Your Street Photography.

You can find more of Neil’s work on his website, and sign up for his street photography newsletter here.

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Neil Milton

Neil Milton is a street photographer and a regular contributor for Shoot It With Film. Find his other articles here, such as 5 Tips to Improve Your Street Photography and Kodak Tri-X: Why I Love It & Why You Should Too.

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