Street Photography Assignments:

75 Reasons to Hit the Streets and Learn

Learn to train your eye and improve your timing in order to capture the decisive moment!

Whether it’s due to social media or the introduction of great rangefinder-style digital cameras over a decade ago, street photography has experienced a remarkable resurgence in recent years. You can be roaming the streets of a classic urban environment (New York, Paris, Tokyo) or on a simple photo walk around a quiet neighborhood—it has never been more popular to pursue the art of capturing those candid, fleeting moments that happen throughout the day, of freezing a moment in time and transforming the ordinary into an extraordinary photograph.

But learning to see light and moment, to make quick decisions, and to nail a photographic composition are all crucial skills you must master in order to become a good street photographer. Photographer, instructor, and author Valerie Jardin has been teaching photographers how to take better photographs for years, and in Street Photography Assignments: 75 Reasons to Hit the Streets and Learn, she provides dozens of prompts for you to practice in order to refine and improve your craft.

These activities focus on themes such as:

 • Street portraits

 • Gesture

 • Shadows

 • Silhouettes

 • Rim light

 • Humor

 • Abstract

 • Tension

 • Motion

 • Reflections

 • Leading lines

 • Creative framing

 • Juxtapositions

 • Double exposures

 • And much, much more!

Each assignment includes a description of the technique, various tips and tricks to practice, technical and compositional considerations, and an example photo that Jardin has captured when practicing the same exercise. Whether you have 30 minutes or 3 hours, each assignment is an opportunity for you to take your camera and hit the streets. No more excuses!

 Table of Contents

·  Street Performers

·  Street Portraits

·  Street Portrait with a Story

·  Photographing the Back of People

·  The Timeless Subject

·  Gesture

·  Silhouettes

·  Sun Burst

·  Rim Light

·  Shadows

·  Shafts of Light

·  Golden Hour

·  Blue Hour

·  From Shadows into Light

·  Night Photography

·  Minimalist Approach in Urban Landscape

·  Minimalist Approach in the Natural Environment

·  Juxtapositions

·  Interconnections

·  Rain

·  Reflections

·  Double Exposures

·  Creative Filter

·  Creative Framing

·  Creative Focusing

·  Looking Up

·  Looking Down

·  Low Angle

·  Leading Lines

·  Negative Space

·  Creating Tension

·  Centering

·  Letting the Subject Come at You

·  Go Fishing

·  Staging with a Billboard

·  Eye Contact

·  Sense of Place

·  Using Signage

·  Humor

·  Looking In

·  Looking Out

·  Public Transportation

·  Train Station Platforms

·  Panning

·  Slow Shutter Speed

·  Camera Movement

·  Abstract

·  Humanity Without People in the Frame

·  Eye Contact

·  Rule of Thirds

·  Centering Your Subject

·  Creative Self Portraits

·  Story in Multiple Frames

·  Themes

·  Hands

·  Feet

·  Umbrellas

·  Hats

·  Dogs

·  Lovers

·  Family

·  Readers

·  Bicyclists

·  Color