What To Look For When Shooting Street Photos?

Are you interested in street photography but struggle with finding things to shoot? If so, this is the story for you.

Keith Chen
4 min readNov 15, 2021
Photo by author. Shot in New York.

This is one of the questions I often get from readers regarding street photography — Keith, I am interested in shooting street photos like yours, but I have no idea what to look for when I am out in the street. Believe it or not, I sometimes face the same challenge if I had stopped doing street projects for a while. To ensure that I have high productivity even after taking a break from street photography, I keep a list of things to look for so I can ramp up quickly every time I am out on the streets. In this story, I will share this list with you and use some of my photos to elaborate on how to use it.

Three things I look for when taking street photos:

#1 — Look for charismatic people and engaging interaction.

Photo by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.

People are the heart of my street photos, so naturally, they are the first thing I look for. When I say look for charismatic people, it doesn't necessarily mean that simply look for people who look like models. Instead, look

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Keith Chen
Keith Chen

Written by Keith Chen

Product manager @ Google.com, ex-Amazon; Adjunct professor @ MICA.edu and Chatham.edu; MBA from CMU.edu; Professional photographer. Language : 中文 / EN