Photographing the Street

Many painters over the centuries have captured the street in painting.  The enduring popularity of such works might inspire the photographer to also capture the personality of a city in this way, however, the traditional long view may not be the best way to photograph a street.  You have to think about what it is that strikes you.  Is it the emptiness of a residential area at a particular time of day? Is it the architecture? Is it a set of patterns? What it is that interests you will determine what is the best image.  Of course, you can shoot multiple images so that you have them and I often do that. 

If we want to see the street as a whole, then perhaps a traditional view is to look down the street from the center, like this street in the St. Hanshaugen neighborhood in Oslo, Norway.

This is a basic documentary shot, meaning that it is not meant to do more than show the street and the buildings on either side of it.  The photo gives the viewer a feel for this neighborhood of the Norwegian city but it is perhaps on the mundane side.  Someone can look at it and understand, from a factual perspective, what this street looks like.  The sky is a dark blue and adds a color interest.  Of course, a narrow cobblestone street with centuries old buildings full of character would be more interesting but that is not this street.  So if we want to capture this street, this long view does not really do much except to show us in straightforward fashion what it looks like.

A second way to capture the street and perhaps afford an edgier tone to the image is to shoot just one side of it.

I eliminated a less interesting side of the street (which had just one visible gray building and an area obscured by trees) and focused on the more colorful and varied buildings that also create a discernible pattern. The road itself—just a patch of black—fills less space than in the prior image.  The eye is drawn down the length of the buildings by the force of perspective.  There is still a sense of the neighborhood, its architecture, and the tone.

Another option is to approach this in the same manner as abstract painters who seek to reduce the representational or documentary nature of an object by capturing it abstractly.  Consider this:

I have reduced the street to an abstract pattern of parts of three of the buildings.  I no longer have a postcard style representation of the street either from the first or second image. 

The point is that when photographing you should be alert to the possibilities and effects that can be achieved by simply framing, without fancy image processing.  You can take a purely documentary image or you can seek to capture something else by abstraction.  You are also not limited to these three positions—storefront shots and shots showing just the door and some windows on the first floor are other options.

I’d be interested in comments on which shot strikes a chord, and how you seek to capture parts of a city like this when traveling.