5 Mistakes Holding Your Street Photos Back

Reading time: 6 minutes

Making mistakes and failing are the best ways to improve as an artist, sometimes it just helps to hear someone say that when you feel like you’re not moving forward with your work. Other times we might be making mistakes and not even realising it, or perhaps not quite learning from what our failures are telling us, so in this article I’m going to cover 5 mistakes that can be easily fixed to improve your street photography fast.

1. Chimping

For those of you who don’t know, chimping is where you take a photo and then immediately check it on the back of your camera. It can be incredibly tempting to check you got the shot right after you took it but this is a big mistake for a number of reasons. Firstly you take your eye off your surroundings, you can easily miss or not be prepared for great moments while checking the back of your camera. It also drains battery life faster, makes you less connected with your environment and is just all round a bad habit to have.

Chimping is a mistake I make often though I’m not going to lie - it’s just so damn tempting. In fact the last time I was in London I was checking the back of my camera and looked up just as a great moment happened, and well, you guessed it, I missed the shot. So we all do it, but if you can do it less, maybe turn off your back screen if you can while you’re out and about, it can really help us stay connected to the environment, make better work and not miss precious moments. 

2. Photographing People From Behind

The next big mistake is photographing people from behind, let me explain. If you find someone, or multiple people, interesting from behind then by all means take the shot. I’ve taken plenty of photos like that myself that I think look great and if you are going to photograph people from behind, try to do so by finding a story or using excellent composition or harnessing great light. What I mean here though is that it’s a mistake to never push yourself to be a bit bolder and photograph people from front on at all.

I find often the reason people photograph others from behind is not for aesthetics but due to a lack of confidence or experience to photograph people who might notice you photographing them while out on the street. Don’t let me put you off making photographs however you want to, that’s absolutely fine, but if you want to push yourself try photographing people so you can see their faces (eye contact can be really powerful too but that’s not for the faint of heart).

While taking photos of people from behind is an excellent way of building confidence on the street it definitely pays to try to be a bit bolder in your approach sometimes. If you can see subjects faces in the frame then often this leads to a photograph the viewer will connect with far more than if it’s the back of someone’s head. 

3. Comparing Yourself to Other People

The next mistake is something I think we all do to some degree but honestly it’s just one of the worst things you can do to halt progress as a street photographer and that’s comparing yourself to other people. 

Street photography first and foremost should be for you. It’s fun, it’s challenging, it’s creative, it gets you outside regularly and anyone who is into street photography I’m sure will agree, it’s addicting. So that should be your main motivation for street photography, because you enjoy it, not because you want to impress other people or to have a big following on social media. 

Once you start making work you’re really happy with though you of course want to show it off, you want to build a following, be part of a community and have people appreciate your work. But it’s a fine line because if you put your work out there regularly and don’t get much attention, this doesn’t mean your work is bad, it just means social media, especially Instagram is not what it used to be. It’s at this point though that we can often fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others

It can be easy to think, ‘Oh this person has this amount of attention and following and they do this kind of photography, so I’m going to do that too’ and then your work ends up just being derivative of someone else’s. It’s great to get inspiration from others don’t get me wrong, but directly comparing yourself to someone else who is on another path to you is not constructive. If you find you’re prone to doing this then a break from social media might be right for you. Or maybe lessen how much you use it, or what platforms you use. I’ve found that creating a folder on my desktop of photos I’ve collected that I really like from other photographers and then rather than comparing myself to the photographer, using those images as inspiration before I go out and shoot, has had a really positive effect on my outlook.

It can be hard not to get down about it when you put out work that you love only for no one to see it, or worse, some people to see it and not even care. Ultimately it’s for you to decide how you use social media but please know that the reception to your work on platforms like Instagram, Threads or Youtube does not define you as an artist.

I think it can be reassuring sometimes to know even photographers with hundreds of thousands of followers online get insecure about their work, compare themselves to others and get down about it from time to time. Comparing ourselves to others is a natural part of life. If you can limit how much you do it though it will have a massive impact not only on your street photography but also your mental well being. It’s not a competition. 

4. Upgrading Gear Rather Than Skills

Now I’ll keep this one short and sweet, gear can be really expensive, and we all need gear in some regard to make photos but often we can focus more on new gear acquisition than actually upgrading our skills. So instead of new gear, go on a workshop, find a street photography photo walk near you, reach out to local photographers for advice or to see if you can join them for a walk and a bit of photography and grow your skills that way. This will absolutely skyrocket your street photography ability and how you see the world way more than buying new gear ever will. 

5. Who You Take Advice From

The last mistake is focusing too much on what other street photographers or YouTubers say. Absolutely including me. Everyone has their own opinion on what street photography really is, how to go about it and what even constitutes good street photography and bad habits, so take my advice and that of others with a pinch of salt.

There is no substitute in my opinion to getting out there and making street photos yourself, experimenting and growing as an artist on your own terms. If you are seeking advice from others, be sure to get out there and test it to find out what works for you to really grow as a street photographer over time. 

We all make mistakes in our street photography regularly and that’s normal, but recognising those mistakes and then working on them can go a really long way towards improving our street photography fast.

For a few more mistakes you might be making and how to fix them don’t miss this article next.