Cities are often the heart of a country, offering diversity, culture, and energy. From the arts precinct of Berlin to the tall buildings of Tokyo, urban photography provides an opportunity to capture the tales, culture, and character of a city.
Unlike other types of photography, urban photography documents the experience of a destination, capturing architecture, food spots, landscape, and hidden spots. If you want to capture the city vibe, whether traveling or living within one, it’s important to master timing, lighting, perspective, and composition.
Hitting the streets and forcing trial and error is the best way to develop your skill set in urban photography whilst growing your style, but you don’t need to learn everything through experience. Below are our top tips to help you capture the essence of every city you enter and help you grow your skills.
Find the narrative in your photos and how you present them
The charm of urban photography is the subtle ways it showcases life in cities. Whether that’s through buildings, people walking, candid portraits, or objects that reflect how humans use the space. There is a story in every street and person captured in urban landscapes, and you can showcase this through your photographs and collections. Start with a photo collage template to help you create a narrative from your photos. You can do this with urban photographs you’ve taken in the past and begin to piece together the narrative your work is trying to communicate. Collaging your photographs helps you practice recognising the themes and story behind your particular photography style, and when you next go on an urban photography journey, you will have a more refined perspective when capturing street life.
Choose a lightweight setup
A lightweight camera or smartphone is most efficient for an urban setup, prioritising mobility and compactness. You’ll be on the move and often have to position your camera and lens on a moment’s notice to capture something you find intriguing. Many street photographers choose to go for a modern mirrorless camera today, but DSLRs are still popular amongst professionals. A smartphone is a great option for someone on a smaller budget, providing a convenient alternative to carrying more equipment.
We recommend that you invest in a couple of diverse lenses, but particularly a wide-angle lens for city shoots. A tripod is a must for capturing high-quality shots, particularly if you need to capture a subject in frame or you want to produce a time-lapse of people’s movement or the light passing over a building, for example.
Change your perspective
While you might think landmarks are the best place to start, it can often be the opposite. Landmarks are often crowded, making it difficult to achieve an uninterrupted view of people, buildings, and structures. You should try capturing buildings so they’re edges are fully square in your frame and play with changing your perspective by shooting from different angles and perspectives. Try a low stance, perhaps, or utilise the reflection in a window or glass. Remember, you are telling a story – try capturing the people, road signs, food spots, and sky.
If you are going to shoot in crowded places, try experimenting with long exposure to blur the pedestrians and movement from your image – this is when a tripod comes in useful. If you’re used to shooting landmarks, try wandering down quieter alleys and see what elements you find intriguing, like the contrast between cobblestones and street art.
Capture the soul of the city
Cities are defined by the people who inhabit them, and some of the best urban photographers heavily rely on the stories of others, following their daily routines and capturing their very emotions. If you can, try and capture people at work, commuters on public transport or people laughing with their friends. Capturing the expressions, movements, and interactions of others can elevate the quality of your work, giving meaning and emotion to your images.
Using burst mode is a great way of capturing the movement and interactions between people, or if storage is an issue for you, choose the live setting on your smartphone. That way, you’ll be able to select from the best or most clear frame in your shot.
Utilise golden hour
Lighting can drastically change the mood of your photos. The golden hour provides a warm, soft light, ideal for portraits and city landscapes. It casts a soft, warm glow over everything in the city, and as well as looking beautiful, it makes it easier to get the right exposure and lighting in your shot to make it pop. Using reflections and shadows is another great way to elevate your images, working with light for a cinematic effect.
Consider framing and the rule of thirds
Capturing the city through arches, doorways, and windows can help set the scene for your shoot by providing a natural frame from the very urban environment you wish to shoot. Shooting through objects can produce depth and dimension in your image, adding to the storyline and reflecting the diversity of the city you are capturing. Using the city skyline or the symmetry of buildings can hugely help in framing your subject in an image. Again, experiment with shooting from different angles and perspectives to give your images and storyline personality!
The rule of thirds is another technique used to elevate framing. It refers to how professional photographers frame their subject, by placing it off-centre for a well-balanced image. Turn the grid lines on your preview screen and position the object along one of the third lines of the frame.
Enhance your images through post-editing
One of the most important steps in capturing the essence of the places you have visited comes from post-editing. Editing can enhance your image by changing photographic elements like exposure, shadows, and contrast, among many others. When you’re out shooting the world of the street, the lighting changes stats, which makes it hard to capture the perfect image every time. Whether you shoot in RAW or JPG, editing allows you to adjust contrast, colour grading, and brightness to elevate the colours and vibe of your image.
Capturing the true essence of a city
Now that you have the gear, techniques, and editing knowledge, it’s time to go out and capture the soul of every city you visit. Get snaps of the people, the landmarks, and the story of the community whilst you experiment with lighting, angle, and framing to develop your photography style. Urban photography opens up a new way to see a city, allowing you to appreciate the small things even more than before. The next time you take your camera to the city, immerse yourself in the culture and let your camera capture the journey of your trip.
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