Street Photography in Vegas!

We all know, I am no street photographer.  Juts look around the site for a while, landscape, landscape, architecture, oh look… more landscape!  However, I got roped into some street photography on Fremont Street in Vegas with several other photographers after the closing of Photoshop World.  From what I am told, if you are going to do some street photography, this is the place to do it!  Of course, I wasn’t even going to bring my camera until someone said, “Hey Blake, grab your camera we all have ours…”  that is a photographers peer pressure, especially coming from the likes of Alan Hess, RC Concepcion, Ryan Turner, Adam Silversmith, Pete Collins, and Glyn Dewis to name a few!

It was a great night for it, apparently the Pride parade was going on that night so the streets were VERY alive (more alive than the average night on Fremont Street)!  It was difficult for me to take any pictures at first.  You see, I am a very timid photographer.  I normally do not like to shoot with anyone else.  I like to get in my zone, study my subject very carefully, take multiple shots from multiple angles and not have anyone looking at me in the process.  Call me weird, call me odd, call me whatever, I know I could never be a wedding photographer because all of those ism’s don’t exactly match that profile!  With that being said, I broke out of my shell rather quickly!

There were 11 of us total, yeah that is 11 photographers with enough camera gear to open a small camera shop!  One man came up to me and said, “Yo dude, are you guys the paparazzi?” 

“I can’t tell you that!” I responded.

“Come on man, who you guys waiting for, I won’t tell nobody!”

” Wait around for another 30 minutes or so and you’ll see!”, I casually responded.

“I ain’t got time for that!”, the man shouted as he stumbled away.

In his defense we really did look like paparazzi.  So much so, the band at the end of Fremont Street stopped between songs and said, “We got ourselves a photography pit tonight!”  He was the lead singer of the band Arena Tribute.  These guys rocked the stage and the lead singer gave some of the best poses I have seen to the “photography pit”.

Tips for Street Photography

I really wish I could give you professional street photography tips from a real street photography professional, but I can’t, because I am not.  Heck, I can’t even define street photography.  I can, however, help you break your mold if you are in a predicament like me.

1. JUST SHOOT:  Don’t worry about how the images look or what you are taking pictures of.  Just shoot in the moment, remember this is the digital world, you can always delete later!
2. SHOOT WHAT MOVES YOU: There is obviously a reason why you took the photo you did.  Was it the scene?  Something happening in the scene?  Capturing a moment?  Regardless of what it was that you were shooting, you did it for a reason.  Try to tap into that reason and aim for multiple shots in that same motivation.  Every shot does not have to be a work of art, shoot what moves you and move on.  Don’t study it too hard as you don’t really have too much time for that, especially in Vegas!
3. KNOW YOUR CAMERA:  This is actually a legitimate tip!  It is a good idea to know your camera and the settings you are in.  You don’t have time to be fumbling with your camera while the shot is happening right in front of you!  This happened to me many more times than I can count!  Not necessarily because I didn’t know my camera, but because I just didn’t capture the speed of the scene in time.
4. BRING THE RIGHT GEAR:  Me being the Landscape photographer that I am, brought my 17-40, and that is it!  Talk about a limitation!  I was stuck in a pretty wide angle, I should have brought the 24-105.  That would have given me a decent wide angle with a decent zoom if I needed it, which I really needed it!  Of course, sometimes a limitation can help you overcome obstacles by making do with what you have.  I still wish I would have carried that zoom with a decent range.

Blake Rudis

f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!