Friday Finds: Urban Photography

I grew up a stone’s throw outside Baltimore city in an industrial little town next to the railroad tracks. I love the sound of trains and cars whirring by, a tall building shadowing the next tall building and the smell and steam of wet asphalt on a hot day after a cool shower. I love the country, but I feel antsy when the closest store of any kind is farther than a 30 minute walk away.

Urban photography captures all I love about city life along with all its hard realities such as abandoned, decrepit buildings and homelessness. More than any other genre, urban photography records the stage we are in our civilization and is an important anthropological record.

This is the topic of this week’s Friday Finds theme. Every week I pick a new topic, invite related photographs to my Flickr Friday Finds Group and search out related links. At the end of the week, I compile my favorite 18 photographs of the week and present some of those in an article compiling the links.

Urban Photography Tips and Links

• Sleepy City. A fabulously put together website of one person’s adventures photographing city life after dark in locations all over the globe.
• Photographing Urban Landscapes from Digital Photography School is a tutorial that includes some different types of urban photography and great information on getting started, such as what equipment to take, how to research and explore locations and what to shoot. DPS also has another article with some quick urban landscape photography tips.
• Quick Tips for Urban Photography After Dark. This is a nice little conversational article about how to make the most of urban photography at night!
• Urban Portrait Photography Tips and Techniques at Picture Correct. If portraits are your thing or you’ve always wanted to photograph people on the street, go grab a cup of coffee and click through to this article! It’s a long read, but there is a plethora of information available here. Camera tips, conversational tips, safety tips: really pretty much everything you need to think about.
• Tips for Urban Decay Photography. If the sight of abandoned dwellings or dilapidated old signs and storefronts make you giddy, this article’s for you. Again, safety is a key factor when shooting this type of urban scene. This article also includes some post processing tips!
• Camera Tripods: How to Choose the Right One for Urban Photography. The title pretty much says it all! You can definitely take some amazing handheld urban photographs, but there are some types of shots you’ll want a tripod for. If you love to get out on the street and take pictures, check out these tripod recommendations before you buy one!

More Urban Photographs

Browse through the entire incredible collection of 176 urban photographs submitted to the Flickr Group this week!

Next Week’s Theme: Light Painting

Photo Credit: Alexander Kesselaar (Site.)

Light Painting is kind of exactly what it sounds like. Paint your photographs with light in a long exposure by moving your camera around or shining a light source onto your scene. Frequently, the technique is used to quite literally paint light onto your scene. I’m extremely excited about this week’s theme because I’ve never tried light painting, but I really want to. I hope that I’m compelled to try it myself!

If you have any photos “painted with light” please feel free to submit up to five photographs to the Friday Finds pool on Flickr tagged dwcff-lightpaint.