Shooting from the hip: the essential street photography guide

Shooting from the hip is a valuable skill that all street photographers should develop. It enables you to capture scenes without actually looking through the viewfinder, thus giving the impression you aren’t actually using the camera at all.

Quadruplets—Istanbul, Turkey
Leica M6 | 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens | Kodak Ultramax 400 film
Using a rangefinder made shooting from the hip easier, with the subjects here barely taking any notice. The shutter sound is so quiet it is inaudible in a busy street.
The technique also allows you to be inventive with angles and different perspectives, without anyone noticing you’re actually photographing.
Whatever camera you are using, you will need a sense of perspective when shooting blindly. You will also need to know where to hold the camera in order to ensure the lens is facing toward the subject and is not too high up, low down, or pointing off to the left or right. This takes practice—be prepared to get it wrong the first few times. Be patient and persistent as this is a skill that will most certainly pay off when shooting street photography.

Auto settings

To help focus, if you are using a camera that has an autofocus function such as a DSLR or compact digital camera, as long as you are aiming your camera correctly and it is positioned well, the focus will be correct.

Manual settings

If you are using a fully manual camera, such as a film rangefinder, shooting from the hip is not as simple as pointing and shooting. In this case you will need to focus and expose correctly without actually looking through the viewfinder.
How will you do this? Most film SLRs and rangefinders have distance indicators on top of the focus ring in both feet and meters. To use this successfully, you will need to judge how far your subject is from the camera, and then turn the focus ring to point to the correct distance.
Chatting Up—Istanbul, Turkey
Leica M6 | 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens | Kodak Ultramax 400 film
Again, a rangefinder here, although aimed at the subject, was barely noticed by him, and if he did, he didn’t object to being photographed, most likely because he didn’t hear the shutter click.
A loud shutter noise can be intimidating for many if shooting in close proximity.

Tip

If you are shooting from the hip and with a manual camera, it’s quite a feat to get every setting correct in a split second. To help you, if you use a large ƒ/number more of the image will be in focus, so even if your focus is incorrect, it won’t show in the image. You should also check the settings beforehand so that you have the exposure set correctly before you begin shooting.

Exercise

Wherever you are, even in your bedroom, pick various objects and guess their position without looking through the viewfinder. Take a shot and see how much of the object you managed to capture. Over time your judgment of where the camera is pointing will become more accurate until it becomes second nature.
Whether you shoot with a digital SLR, a Holga or the camera on your phone, today’s cameras let you seize the moment and shoot whenever and wherever you like. This makes them perfect for street photography, the genre choice of some of the greatest photographers of all time, with names like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee and Robert Frank turning gritty reality into iconic images. In The New Street Photographer’s Manifesto, Tanya Nagar will open your eyes to the photographic potential of our urban world, offering the tricks and techniques that put you in the right place, at the right time, and let you create amazing photos.

The New Street Photographer’s Manifesto
Tanya Nagar
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RRP for print edition: £9.99