My system for Street
My system for Street
In my previous blog post I mentioned how busy I was back in 2018. That was the year I pressed the camera button 100,000 times. That was a tremendous amount of practice and experience. I was crazy busy. I’d have to dig through 12 external hard drives to know the exact numbers, but I believe I went out 33 times that year and averaged just shy of 3000 images each day I was out, and those are single exposures, not continuous motor drive. My typical time spent on the street when I actually get the time to practice is anywhere from 8 to 10 hours each day. I enjoy it that much.
Now I would really have to dig to figure out how many of the 100k images were actually edited to completion and shared to the public. I honestly have no clue. It is something though that I will eventually try to figure out, not just for 2018, but for all the years I’ve gone out. It’s called a ‘hit’-ration (I don’t like that term), but I do believe that it’s a good measure to know. I recall that at some point I was averaging 1.8 ‘hit’-ration. So, let’s just say for every 100 button presses, two of them were selected from the cull and edited to a final image that was published. So, 1800 images for that year. Not bad. But it also demonstrates very clearly just how hard it is to create a successful street photography image.
But here’s the thing. When I return home from a day out photographing, once the images are safe on the laptop and external drives, I immediately go and look at them using the software Photo Mechanic. When I do this, it will be the first time seeing any of the images. And what a thrill that is! The reason for this is that when I’m on the street, I never look at the back of the camera. Ever. At the start of my day, I will get all set up and go through my check list and make sure everything is working. That will be the last time looking at the back screen. Then I turn the screen off. The main reason is to conserve battery power. I always go out with two fully charged quality Canon batteries for my camera, and they are both fully depleted by the end of the day. In fact, that’s the only time I stop, when it’s impossible for me to continue. Sometimes but very rarely I’m forced to stop because all of my memory cards become full, but usually the end of my day comes when the batteries become exhausted and catch fire.
The other reason I never look at the back of the camera, is that I’m too afraid of missing an image. I’m completely serious about this. When I’m out, every second counts. The images I share on this website are priceless to me, because of how incredibly elusive the opportunities are, let alone not making any mistakes (or have someone walk in front of me the instance I press the button). When I’m on the street I am one hundred percent concentrating only on what is in front of me. I am constantly scanning all around me looking for images. It’s exhausting to focus so intensely all day long, but without this effort, the images wouldn’t happen. It’s that difficult. So many missed images over the years. And you remember them. Missed because of so many different reasons.
One other reason of never looking at the back screen is that I first learned how to photograph using film. Digital cameras weren’t a thing back then. For those of you who may not know, you’d load a roll of film with say 36 exposures, go make 36 images, wait a week to get the film back, and then you see the results. I still work that way today, but instead of a week, I get to see the images each night. So, at the end of the day, when I sit down and take that first look at all the images I’ve recorded – it’s like I’m there again reliving each moment, and to see the ones that actually worked out, it’s sometimes shocking. I go through all the images and rank them as selects, and then the selects are sorted by different levels of ‘best’. The obvious images that blow my mind that night are the few that I will edit right then and share with the world.
That’s the fun part, working on what I consider the best images for that day. But here’s another thing – each image typically takes me at least an hour to edit. I spend nine hours on the street, upload and backup all the images, do a quick cull and sort, then edit what I can and share them that night. And then, if possible, I’m right back out the next day doing it all over again. It’s crazy sometimes. But that’s part of the reason why I have over 16,000 posts on Instagram today.
But here’s another thing. I still have all the 98% of the images that I didn’t edit and publish still to be worked on later. Although, to save storage space, I have gone through at least half of all the images I’ve recorded over the years and deleted quite a few. It’s become much easier for me now to know if I have a keeper or not. But here’s a tip for those of you starting out – never ever delete. And the main reason for this is that for the most part, we create images ahead of our time. Meaning, you won’t immediately know if you have a keeper on the day that you recorded it. It’s something you will grow into later. Each night after a day of practising street photography, I’m mainly only interested in the images that I think are obviously the best for that day. But many many times I’ve gone back through the files at a later date and found images that are great to me then, that I missed during the first cull. It always happens. You’re tastes change, you learn new things, and you basically see things differently as you go through life. So never delete until long after you’ve recorded an image. You just don’t know if it’s a good one or not.
And the other benefit of not deleting, at least for me, is that I have so many images in my backlog, that if I were never to go out again to photograph people on the street, I would have an endless supply of unedited images to complete. And I also love to go back and re-edit completed images and try new compositions, or change it to black and white, or just try again because Photoshop has improved again. Oh, and to let you know, I only use Lightroom to setup the RAW files, and Photoshop to do all the final edits. But I was just so busy back in 2018 that I lost track of all the images; there were just too many. And I completely screwed up the numbering of all the finished edits and images I’ve shared, let alone the fact that many of them have been re-edited and re-published. Because of this, I am unable to actually say home many unique images I’ve crated over the years. Crazy!
I said in my last post that I rarely get more than 10 likes on anything I post on Instagram. But no surprise there! If I stumbled upon my site, I wouldn’t like anything either, knowing that my feed would be filled with just images from this account. I have had a bad habit of sometimes sharing around 100 images on Instagram in one night. I would sometimes go so far as to be blocked. But hey, what else am I to do with all of these images. Might as well just share them and let them take on a life of their own. Besides, once their done, their done, and I’m moving on to create more images.
Being creative is all I want to do. It’s good for me, and I believe it’d be good for you if you give it a try. It’s also something I can’t turn off. I see images everywhere. In fact, I am always practising without a camera, always watching people and leaning new things every day. It’s endlessly fascinating.
Now all of the above is about creating a single image. But I also love to work in series, and post multiple images together, or go back and look for different combinations of images that may work together. In fact, I rarely post just one image at a time. Or if I do, I will always post more images right afterwards. The reason for this is that I just feel by sharing more than one image will better demonstrate what I’m trying to say. I am never satisfied with just one. That’s the main reason why I love taking pictures at events. I just love the story behind multiple images. Although every image I edit to completion is treated as its own image, with the goal that it should be able to stand on its own, and have some hint of a story within it. Working in series and multiple images attracts me so much that I feel I may be well suited to trying wedding photography. Editorial photography for sure, but who know what the future holds…
And there you go, a little look at how I approach street photography. Until next time.
Thank you for being here, and for your time.
October 20, 2025 Michael Gordon White