When I look around at the work of various street photographers, I sometimes wonder why they’re photographing what they are. At times, they explain it. But at other times, they don’t want to in a move that’s often seen as a superficial way to make them seem more mysterious. However, street photography has questions that really need to be asked. Some of it has to do with homeless people, while others have to do with photographing people in general on the streets.

An important Question About Street Photography

There’s an important question to ask yourself when photographing people in the streets. It goes something like this:

Does the person you’re photographing have something truly unique and fascinating to them? Or are you photographing them because they’re vulnerable to your camera?

There’s an odd duality here as well. As a street photographer, you are doing nothing illegal by capturing candid photos of people on the streets. You don’t need to ask for permission, and the only people who will say that it’s the nice thing to do are the people being photographed and anyone the idea is brought to. Otherwise, everyone is always too busy staring at the great photo that you captured.

Well, that’s provided that you captured a great photo. For photos to have meaning and elicit feelings, they must have substance. More specifically, something has to bring out an emotion in a person looking at the photo.

When we look at the images of many famous street photographers, we can get many different reactions. Let me name a few:

• Gretchen Grace captures lots of irony and genuinely funny moments
• Michael Young looks for beautiful moments
• Steven Siegel captured wild moments in NYC
• Mark Seymour finds really fascinating framing that Wes Anderson would be proud of
• Cedric Roux finds intriguing moments that you would overlook on first glance
• Concha De La Rosa finds and captures photos of specifically old people in very visually stimulating settings.

More importantly, they’re doing all of this by not taking advantage of someone. Someone that’s homeless is vulnerable, for example.

What Does It Matter?

Why does this matter? Well, you’re not going to become a better street photographer, and there’s no reason for you to post your photos online then. But you truly should check your intent lest it becomes more predatory. Predatory practices puts all photographers into major problems with the law and the future of the art form.

Good street photography should bring about emotions to people while also making people realize how beautiful the framing is, the light is, etc. It can also bring people to understand the world around them so much more.

With that, also ask yourself why you’re posting your photos online. If you don’t have a good reason, then take them down. What’s the point? You should ask yourself this as you further refine and develop your portfolio of photography.

Admittedly, sometimes we do it when testing camera gear just to see if the camera and lens will focus on the subject. But that’s rare, and we wouldn’t call what we’re doing portfolio worthy either. My portfolio-worthy street photography is on my website. And everything there was shot with intent.

Becoming a Better Street Photographer

In your journey to become a better street photographer, you should ask yourself why you’re shooting photos of people. And if you can’t answer that, then maybe put the camera down for the moment. What’s more, if when going through the images later you can’t figure out why you’d include something in your selection of your best photos or not, maybe you should speak with someone that critiques portfolios.

Camera phones like the iPhone have been improving their chips and lenses year after year, but sometimes it’s a simple camera tip for getting better images that can blow people’s minds. And here’s an example that even Apple is talking about as if it’s a new feature on its phones. 

Photographs can make a subject look taller, and often more dramatic, when taken from a low angle. How do you do that with your phone? Just turn it upside down. The neat thing is that many phones will automatically turn the image the right way up after it’s captured so you don’t even have to go to the trouble of flipping the photo (see our pick of the best camera phones if you need to upgrade).

The ‘hack’ is well established on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but Apple itself seems to have just caught on. The Apple Support account has recently shared the tip via Twitter (now rebranded as X). “Turn your iPhone upside down to get close to the ground when you take a photo or video. The Camera app automatically saves it right side up,” Apple tweeted. 

It really is that simple (if you do actually want the finished image to be upside down for some reason, you can always flip it vertically using your phone’s image editor). While Apple is suggesting this is a ‘new angle’, some people are pointing out that it’s hardly a revolution. “I’ve done this for 30 years. That isn’t new,” one person replied to Apple. It also works on other phones, including Samsung devices. Nevertheless, many people are still discovering the trick today for everything from portraits and landscape shots to photos of drinks and mushrooms.

For more pointers on getting the best shots, see our iPhone Pro camera tips. We also have a guide to the best cameras if you find your smartphone just isn’t up to the job.

These photographs by Dexter Navy take us behind the scenes of the 2023 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, which recently took place during the Luma Arles photography fair. Every year photographers descend on the French city of Arles for the fair, which sees images from some of the industry’s most pre-eminent modern talents on display, amid the ruins of this former capital of ancient Rome. 

Among the fair’s highlights, the annual Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents invites a group of emerging talents from around the world to respond to the recurrent annual theme of ‘Face to Face’, with the final presentation judged by a rotating panel of celebrated industry figures.

This year’s panel featured Brazilian photographer Rafael Pavarotti, Belgian photographer Barbara Iweins, French art historian and photographer Damarice Amao, creative and image director for Dior Make-Up Peter Philips, as well as competition regulars Maja Hoffmann, president and founder of Luma Arles, and Simon Baker, director of the Maison Europeenne de le Photographie in Paris.

Iris Millot wins Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents

The jury named Iris Millot, a young Arles-based photographer, the winner for her visual narration of the life of her great-aunt Hélène, who has been cultivating an isolated family farm for over 40 years. The result is a moving meditation on one individual’s life as well as a more expansive commentary on the history of farming and its future in our current climate. 

Millot was among the 12 finalists for the prize, including talents from Mexico, the Netherlands, China and more. Their work will be on show at the Grande Halle Ouest, until 24 September 2023.

Here, we share London photographer Dexter Navy’s documentation of the event. Navy, who was invited by Parfums Christian Dior to train his unique eye on the proceedings, called the fair ‘a beautiful daydream where people from all over the world come to celebrate photography’. Where you can come to see ‘all the different point of view; some were adventurous some extremely personal – it was nice to be reminded that all your emotions can be expressed in photography! I also think, established or not, you can always learn from others and if you’re not constantly evolving, then you’re doing something wrong.’

luma.org

dior.com

Minh Ngọc Nguyễn is a Danish-Vietnamese photographer born and based in Copenhagen. Having developed a love for the medium in his childhood, due to its ability to capture and hold his attention — “I have a notoriously bad attention span”, he explains — he has since built a practice centred around his dual heritage, exploring “Western portrayals of South-East Asian culture”. Growing up in Denmark, these skewed perspectives imbued Minh with “internalised racism” and he says he has spent the years since attempting to “process and reverse” this affliction.

Specifically, his work takes the form of still life photography, with Minh composing his shots using objects and food to challenge the stereotypes around South-East Asian culture. “Through deconstructing and reconstituting specific objects and iconography, I question their appropriation and reclaim them from the fetishisation to which they have become prone,” he says. Minh’s layered, textural compositions are undoubtedly his trademark style, and it is in this context, he explains, that he feels most free to carry out his investigations. “The utilisation of conventional studio lighting and still-life setups create an almost ethereal space in which I can intentionally derive and strip objects from their original contexts, and ascribe new values and associations to them — a fun and level playing field with illogical criteria.”