Does Your Discomfort Photographing Strangers Keep You From Being a Good Street Photographer?

Home News Film Photography by Gordon Webster March 12, 2025 3 Comments 3 Comments It takes a combination of courage, self-confidence, and a relaxed, easygoing nature to feel comfortable approaching and photographing strangers. For some of us, this comes more naturally than for others, but is this a skill that we can develop with a view to becoming better street photographers? I don’t know about you, but I would definitely count myself among those who experience a certain degree of nervousness and discomfort when it comes to photographing strangers in the street. I actually do quite a lot of street photography because I love it—to the point that my wife has sometimes complained that I take more pictures of strangers than I do of our family (not true, by the way). But like Thomas Heaton, the photographer who made the video presented here, I struggle with some level of anxiety when it comes to approaching strangers to take their pictures. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Thomas and...