Street Photography : Essentials to Carry

Street Photography is an exciting activity, it is full of widespread ideas. We wrote lot of articles on street photography itself. Without distracting your mind from this article, just two links towards previously published two articles on Street Photography will not, at least very harmful – first is Taking Better Street Photography and a reloaded type of article – Secrets of Street Photography Again.

When we are preparing to leave for the first trip in which we will bring our new camera, we are inevitably placed in front of the difficulties for choosing the correct equipments to carry it. The products unfortunately do not make life easier, including the shoulder bags, backpacks, backpacks on both shoulders, waist packs and cases – the probability is paralyzed in the selection in very high rate. How to choose a camera bag is a separately discussed topic.  This article Street Photography Essentials, is based on our research and the various testimonials that you can pick from the professional photographers, we try to make the selection easier in broader aspect.

If you own a compact digital camera, you probably do not have these problems, but if you have an advanced digital camera like a bridge camera or especially a Digital SLR, then this article is for you.

Street Photography : Essentials to Carry

Let us try for a moment to frame as we usually do in the photographic journey. If, you are like us, you are not a simple but a near professional street photographer, probably your days on the road will have these features:

1. Every day, you are roaming around from morning to late at night without being in the room or apartment.
2. During the day you visit disparate places where the lighting conditions can vary immensely and subjects to photograph may vary from sweeping vistas to small typical objects.
3. Probably you will walk a lot.
4. Opportunities of photography may arrive without warning, so you have to always be prepared.

From these observations, achieve some requirements that our equipment must have some properties :

1. Should be as light as possible
2. The weight must be distributed well on the body to reduce fatigue
3. Access to the camera must be as rapid as possible
4. Must have additional space in which you can put a map, a pen and paper or anything else that we can need during the day (the camera does not protect us from the rain, for example ! )
5. Capacity must be sufficient to hold the camera with its accessories.
6. Some basic medicines
7. Some way to communicate with your own World in case of emergency

Street Photography : Bagging the List

Personal stuffs :

1. Identity Cards, including passport if needed
2. Any needed permit
3. Credit Card, know well not all countries supports our normal, standard Credit Cards
4. A GPS or some sort of navigation system
5. Some basic medicines
6. Water protection system. Umbrella in simple words
7. Water to drink
8. Some sort of dry foods
9. Towel, additional minimum alternative dress depending on where you are going
10. Cell Phone or Satellite Phone or both
11. Chargers, Solar charging unit or mechanical device those can charge the batteries
12. Girlfriend or wife (add her 50% weight)

Photography Stuffs :

1. The camera itself
2. 18-55mm lens
3. 70-300mm lens
4. 35mm or 50mm lens
5. Accessories for cleaning
6. Micro SD
7. Charger for the batteries
8. A charged extra battery
9. A portable computer
10. Proper insurance of all the things

The list is not really small, plus if you have additional habits like smoking, they will count. For night, you will need some extra tips which basically we discussed before in Good Pictures at Night on the Road.