2 Philosophies to Improve Your Street Photography

Reading time: 5 minutes

I used to get tangled up trying to make great photographs. I want to make images people resonate with and love to look at and as a result sometimes I could get overwhelmed when things didn’t go my way. I’m a bit of a perfectionist as well, so when what I’m trying to do doesn’t meet my expectations, then it can really get me down.

So how can we get out of our own heads and instead focus on improving our photography?

Well in this article I’m going to share two simple but powerful philosophies with you which have helped me make huge improvements to my photography, so you can too.

1. This is Just an Experiment

‘This is just an experiment’ is a quote I got from Ali Abdaal which I’ve written down and stuck to my desk and it’s now a mantra I use often, so how can that help you improve your photography? Let me explain. 

If you’re anything like me you can take your work really seriously from time to time and when we inevitably have a small failure or something we produce isn’t well received by the community, this can really have a negative effect on us and can make us loose sight of the fun of photography. It all gets a bit too serious and it gets us down. That’s where the philosophy, ‘It’s just an experiment’ comes in.

If I’m worried about trying something new, or my recent work isn’t very good, or a YouTube video I post bombs then I just say to myself, “It’s just an experiment”. It kinda gives my brain permission to embrace a perceived failure. When I’m trying something new and I’m overthinking it a bit I can just say, well it’s just an experiment, if it doesn’t work then I can experiment with something different next time.

It’s really quite simple but it has been hugely freeing for me to sort of give myself that permission to try new things without fear of it not working out because experimenting can be of huge benefit to improve our photography. Photographers can spend a long time finding their style but if we find a style we like and then fall into that for a long period of time then sometimes it can get a bit stale and boring but then we might feel afraid of changing it up which can really hold us back as artists.

This quote by the illustrator Ralph Steadman put it really well when he said, “Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment”. And it’s so very true, we need to give ourselves time to experiment in order to grow as artists.

When I first started with photography I had a beat up old point-and-shoot camera and took snaps on my travels, then when I realised I was enjoying it and wanted to take it more seriously I bought a ‘proper’ camera and I got interested in people so I approached strangers for portraits to try that. At the time I was doing a lot of travelling so I moved from portraits to more travel related photography and street scenes. Then I moved to New Zealand and tried my hand at landscapes which was fun, but in my heart I knew I was most interested in photographing people candidly. When I moved back to the UK because of Covid, once it was over like so many others I was desperate to hit the streets and capture life going back to normal and that’s where my journey into street photography really began, looking at the work of others, constantly trying to learn and experiment with my photography.

If I hadn’t tried new ideas and experimented I’d still just be taking travel snaps and wouldn’t be the photographer I am today. Next time you find yourself feeling down about your photography try a different approach with the mantra, ‘This is just an experiment’ - take the pressure off and try something new, you never know where it might take you.

2. Done is Better Than Perfect

I’m a perfectionist. Always have been, and although in some aspects of my life it’s been useful, more often than not it can really hold me back. I constantly overthink my photography and my YouTube channel which can be exhausting. Sure it drives me to get better but once I started to embrace the philosophy of ‘done is better than perfect’, I started to lighten up a bit and my outlook as well as my photography became more freeing and enjoyable. 

Having a bit of a perfectionist streak can really hold us back when it comes to experimentation, because at the heart of experimenting we are trying something new, getting out of our comfort zone, being a beginner again and this can be very uncomfortable as a perfectionist. But if you start thinking that getting the thing done is the most important thing, regardless of the results then this helps so much. 

One of my YouTube idols Casey Neistat holds this philosophy in everything he does, just getting it done is so much better than obsessing over something over and over to get it absolutely perfect. So once I started focusing on done is better than perfect, I started trying new things, focusing on the process rather than the results and my work has greatly improved because of this.

For so long I never printed my work as I wanted to get an amazing set of photos before I printed them out, then I had to think about what paper, how big, how do I get the edit right and so on, which took ages and then when I finally got a print back I didn’t like the quality so was upset with the whole exercise. So I stopped with the idea of printing my work, until I embraced done is better than perfect.

I printed out a bunch of photos small as cheaply as possible, and then something clicked, does a photo even exist if it isn’t physically printed? I don’t know but I started to notice things in the photos that worked and that didn’t once I held them in my hands, my mind started bubbling with ideas of things to try and I can’t wait to print more work in the future. 

When you find yourself overthinking your work, embrace the philosophy of done is better than perfect. Apply it to your photography process and you’ll see yourself take more photos, experiment more and improve much quicker than if you’re stuck in your own head.