Recently I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days wandering the streets of Spain’s capital, Madrid. Street photography is such an easy genre to get out and shoot – it’s free, you don’t need much kit, and it is great to explore the world with a different view. Although it’s easy to go out and shoot, it is a little harder to master. With a few simple tricks and tips though you can start to take your street shots to the next level. 

• The best camera for street photography

When I first started out I would look for evenly lit shaded areas, they were easy to photograph but lacked depth and tone. Our planet Earth being the three-dimensional beautiful spinning rock that it is needs to be captured in such a way we can show our viewers as much detail as possible through our lens. I like to travel light, and certain airlines aren’t a fan of you bringing any luggage with you so on this trip I was walking around with my small beaten-up Fujifilm X-T2 and Fujinon 35mm f/2 R XF WR lens. For me, a 35mm or 50mm field of view is ideal for street photography.

Super tips for shooting the street

1. Use automatic shutter speed 

In street photography moments can be fleeting and gone before you’ve even had time to raise your camera to your eye. I shoot with auto shutter speed to avoid missing a shot. Some people dislike any automatic settings but you can exploit them for an advantage in tricky shooting conditions.

2. Use automatic ISO

Each camera will vary slightly, but on my Fujifilm camera I have three auto ISO settings. Number one for street photography is set to use anything within 100-1600 ISO. I then tell my camera not to lower the shutter speed below 1/125sec while automatic ISO is enabled. ISO setting number two will be 1600-6400, and number three is 6400-128,000 – both of these will always make sure my shutter is at least 1/125sec.

3. Experiment with your aperture 

I tend to shoot wide open most of the time, which means my shutter speed is increased and I get a short sharp shot. Sometimes a shallow focus isn’t the best setting for a scene, you may want a deeper focus to incorporate more of the background. So try using anything from f/1.4 (if your lens allows) to f/9 for different aesthetics.

4. Shoot the street with confidence

By using the automatic settings from above, you’re now free to explore the streets and concentrate on the action. You don’t need to rush around too much, you can just park yourself on a bench and wait for people to walk into your frame. Make sure you expose for the brighter section of the image, this will give you far better contrast. I find using the LCD screen and shooting from the hip can be a good way to stay incognito, most camera screens are fully articulating now so make them work to your advantage. Try not to review your images, and concentrate on what’s in front of you.

Check out Street photography: how to remove distracting elements with long exposures, be sure to see our top 35mm prime lenses rated

Since growing up in Cincinnati, playing in a local groovy psych-rock band (Surdy-Greebus) in the late ’60s, attending medical school at the University of Cincinnati, then pursuing photography and eventually assisting the great landscape photographer Ansel Adams, Stu Levy’s renowned photographic work is calling him back to the Queen City.

On April 28, Levy will give an artist talk at Iris Bookcafe and Gallery in Over-the-Rhine, where his work is currently on view. Stu Levy: Landscape and Grid-Portraits runs through May 31 at Iris Cafe, where the walls are masterfully adorned with snapshots of Levy’s impressive body of work. The artwork is a photographic balance of grand landscapes and intimate grid portraits.

“I had always considered my landscape photos, especially the more abstract ones, to be the right brain activity compared to the rest of my life,” Levy said in an email to CityBeat. “But when the grid portraits started to emerge, they became a new right brain to the previous right brain. Both show the fine detail of the subject matter, but also suggest something beyond a more literal description of the person or place being photographed.”

During the artist talk, Levy says he plans to converse with the exhibit curator, Bill Messer, share the backstory of some exhibited photos – both landscape and grid portraits – and also reflect on his experience with photo education in Cincinnati and with Adams.

Messer has accomplished a museum-grade arrangement of Levy’s photographs at the OTR cafe, where visitors can also indulge in locally-sourced, house-made menu items and plenty of books.

Levy’s work appears in more than 24 institutional collections like the Cincinnati Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Photographic Arts and the Wilson Centre for Photography in London. Among international gallery placement, Levy’s work has also been published as two monographs and two single-image artist’s books, according to a press release.

“People have been after me to do a show with Stu for years, because there are a lot of people here who still know him. Both people in the music business, people who know him from his family and people who went to Walnut Hills with him,” Messer says. “He’s been great to work with.”

Messer says that when Levy left Cincinnati for life out west, the landscapes “blew his mind,” and years ago when Levy was attempting to capture a giant cave, he couldn’t get it all in one shot. Levy decided to take multiple images of the scene and piece them together, which became the inaugural work of Levy’s body of grid portraits. Levy’s black and white landscapes offer a glimpse into western terrain of all kinds, sometimes contrasted enough to feel abstract and other times encompasses sharp, majestic parts of nature.

His grid portraits tell intimate stories of their subjects, especially when featuring a person. The subjects often appear more than once in the images, displaying different activities or aspects of life. The expert collage of different scenes accomplishes sometimes chaotic movement that imparts an aerial view of an individual’s life. Whether it be an artist or politician, Levy includes components of his subject’s lives that create a cohesive image and detailed story.

“I think of the grid portraits as mini movies of the subject’s life,” Levy says. “But the viewer remembers a ‘frame’ from two or three different scenes and combines them into one space, even though they might have happened at different times and in different places. I think of it as recombinant architecture. I also emphasize the importance of all the artifacts in the subject’s environment which also help describe their personality.”

The artful way that Levy assembles his images could not be accomplished in one shot, without the numerous points of view and passage of time, the profound depiction of his subjects would be lost. In Levy’s portrait of Cincinnati resident and curator Mary Baskett, she is pictured three times within the piece. Once at her piano, another time sitting in a stairwell reading a book and once more happily posing on a balcony. Even though she is clearly photographed in various parts of her home, the work as a whole appears as one scene. In a trick of the eye, the viewer might think it’s digitally altered before taking a closer look.

“The portraits have this element of time, which he finds really interesting,” Messer says. “It’s also got this opportunity to have multiple identifications, multiple personalities in the same image. Almost every other portrait is one thing, whatever it is, and it could be an amazing portrait. It could be a portrait that suggests many identities and things, but it’s still going to be one thing. So here, especially if you collaborate with your sitter, you get a chance to say, ‘Well, what do you want to express in this picture? What aspects of you do you want to be in this picture?’ And that’s pretty great.”

Visit Iris Bookcafe and Gallery at 1331 Main St. in Over-the-Rhine. Stu Levy: Landscape and Grid-Portraits runs through May 31. Levy will be at the gallery on April 28 at 5 p.m. for an artist talk. Visit stulevyphoto.com for more information.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – WAVE News is sad to announce the passing of one of our photographers, Josh Whitney.

Josh is a veteran photographer, who came to WAVE in 2021. He also worked for WHAS-TV prior to coming to WAVE.

Josh had a beloved dog named Lakota that was his best friend and will be well taken care of. He would always take time during busy news days to pet dogs if he saw any.

Josh is from Western Kentucky and is survived by his mother, father and brother.

“Joshua was one of the most sincere and caring people I have ever had the opportunity to work with, said WAVE VP and General Manager John O’Brien. Joshua was a valued member of our team working as a photographer for the past two and a half years. We offer our deepest sympathy to all who are impacted by Joshua’s passing.”

Chief photographer Doug Druschke had the following words to share:

“I will always remember, and will always cling to the thought of how excited Josh was to come work at WAVE. He was so happy to be part of this team. He cared deeply about the work he was doing and cared even more for the people he worked with. That’s Josh; the man with the biggest heart. He was known to give his lunch to strangers on the street and help console families of tragedies. I will miss his heart, his smile and his kid-like exuberance when he started here. Rest easy, my friend. We have the lens from here.”

We thank Josh for all of his hard work. He will be heavily missed. Details on funeral arrangements are still pending.

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On April 23rd, the streets of Barcelona were filled with book stalls, roses, and thousands of people strolling to celebrate one of the most emblematic and anticipated festivals of the year for the Catalans: Sant Jordi’s Day.

Amidst the crowd buying roses and browsing through the book stalls for their favorite authors, photographers try to capture the essence of this celebration with spontaneous images of passersby. A challenge that photojournalist Jordi Borràs has achieved with the most romantic image of Sant Jordi, which has gone viral and uncovered a secret relationship.

**Photography** In the image, two young people can be seen passionately kissing among the crowd in the streets of Barcelona, completely oblivious to everything happening around them and unaware that a photojournalist was about to uncover their secret relationship.

Family. This is how Clara Molins, deputy editor of Via lliure and sister of the protagonist in the picture, Toni Molins, explains it. In an interview with La Vanguardia, she shared how her family reacted upon learning about her brother’s secret relationship, and how he claims he didn’t realize he was being photographed while kissing.

Viral Image. According to Clara Molins, she was having dinner with her parents when she first saw the image: “A journalist friend sent me the photo that I had seen in the news and later on Twitter,” she begins to explain to La Vanguardia, stating that her brother had not yet told them that he had a girlfriend.

We found out about their relationship thanks to the photo because they haven’t introduced us to them yet

Clara Molins

Secret Relationship. “We found out about their relationship through the photo because they haven’t introduced them to us yet. We just found out that they are in a relationship. He has kept this relationship a secret because they have only been seeing each other for a short time, just a few weeks or a month, and he hasn’t explained much to us,” confesses.

The Reaction. Clara Molins assures that her family has taken the anecdote with a lot of humor, and although they have already been able to see the new couple of Toni through the photo, they do not want to pressure to meet her in person: “We respect her timing for when she wants to introduce her officially. When she wants to bring her home, we will be delighted to meet her. We will laugh a lot when we remember that we met her thanks to this photo”.