I don’t really consider myself a street photographer although a lot of my photography takes place on the street. The techniques and above all the eye that street photographers have separates them from simple snappers like myself. One technique that street photographers use in order to blend in an capture candid images is zone focussing (see below for the Wikipedia definition of zone focussing), it takes some practise to perfect and the images below are the best from my first experiment with it. There were quite a few misses, tops of head or out of focus faces but when I got it right I was really pleased with the results and it is something I would really like to try again.
“Today the term “zone focus” refers to the technique of setting a fixed focal distance (turning off autofocus), and often a fixed aperture, hence fixing the depth of field, and then taking photographs at that distance; the DOF can be read off of the DOF scale on the focus ring, hence the term “zone”. This is frequently used in street photography to allow rapid and candid “shooting from the hip” (shooting without composing in the viewfinder) and avoiding autofocus lag.[1][2][citation needed] Zone focusing is also useful for pet action photography, where the time delay of focusing may be unworkable.”
