My recent photography class centered around street photography. Most of us sat through the first two classes squirming in our chairs: taking photos of random people on the street? And how close are you to them physically? You look awfully close. And don’t they punch you in the face? How do you possibly conjure up the nerve to do this??

The teacher then explained that when you’re shooting random people on the street, you shoot from the hip. Literally. Your hold your camera near your hip.

Now, this has some obvious drawbacks, like, for instance, that you have little idea of what you’re taking a photo of. There’s a lot of guesswork and aim. You have to sense whether your camera is pointed at the right thing. Is the nearby lamp pole in frame? Am I really just taking a photo of the asphalt? Did I just get a photo of someone’s midsection?

So, a lot of those concerns are extremely valid and real. You end up taking a lot of errant photos. BUT, the photos that do come out, are kind of fascinating, real, and beautiful.

As the teacher pointed out, by doing this, your face is exposed. People feel less threatened by the camera if they can see your face. With your face exposed, camera hanging around your midsection, and the click of the shutter blending into street noise, people won’t even notice you taking a photo. (Key here is not to look at your camera. As soon as you look at your camera, everyone else will look at your camera too.)

It’s actually kind of really fun once you get started. With one finger on the shutter, the other hand cradling your lens and hopefully pointing it in the right direction, photography becomes a game.

This also translates well to taking photos of your family. It’s much less obnoxious and intrusive, both great things when your family’s starting to feel a little paparazzi’d. The carefree manner and imperfect photos make the scene more dynamic and real, and draw the viewer in. Also, being able to see the action in real life, not through a viewfinder, means that you’re more likely to see and capture those instantaneous little moments that make a photo great.

And if you have little ones too, your hip is their eye level, so photos taken down low have this child worldview aspect to them.

It’s also just a nice break from the regular lock your legs, hold camera up, focus, snap rut you can get into.

If you’d like to try it out, set your camera on the widest angle you have (zoom out as far as you can) so that you have more of a chance of getting your subject in the frame. Then put your camera on autofocus (and a high ISO, especially if you’re shooting in a low-light setting).

Let me know if you try it out! And send any fun photos you take.