Street Photography Tips, Interaction, Travel, Guides
*A series of guides on shooting Street Photography in cities around the world. Find the best spots to shoot, things to capture, safety concerns, street tips, and more for cities around the world. I have personally researched, explored and shot Street Photography in every city that I create a guide for. So you can be ready to capture the streets as soon as you step outside with your camera!
My Eastern European Street Photography Tour ended in Budapest, Hungary, which was a great city to finish it off. I enjoyed all the cities I worked and photographed during this trip, but if I had to choose, Kiev and Budapest would be my favorites. Budapest has become a top spot for travel in Europe, and it’s easy to see why. The city has so much to offer that it would also be one of my top cities to live in Europe. Check out my 7 first impressions of Budapest to find out some of the reasons why.
And as far as Street Photography goes, the city grows on you the longer you spend exploring all it has to offer. So here’s 33 photos that I was able to capture during my time in Budapest…
After Belgrade, I made my way up to Budapest, Hungary for some work and decided to stay longer than planned, while also making a short trip to Bratislava. When I first arrived in Budapest, the weather wasn’t good, the light was bad, and I wasn’t finding much to shoot. So why did I stay longer? Because there’s something special about Budapest that I didn’t want to leave yet. Fortunately, the weather and light got better, and I started finding photos too.
Living in Istanbul and traveling around Eastern Europe, I was constantly hearing about how great Budapest is from travelers. It had the feeling of the “new european city” being added to every traveler’s list. Everyone’s always trying to find the new city in Europe that has so much to offer, but hasn’t been overrun with tourists or inflated prices yet. And Budapest is that city right now.
I remember my first time in Prague years ago, before everyone found out about it. Budapest has that similar feeling. And it’s great.
So here are my first impressions of Budapest, from my personal Street Photographer perspective…
For this Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week, I’m sharing a few photos instead of just one. They were all taken in Budapest, Hungary at the trolley stop by Fővám tér. Last week, I shared another photo taken here too. As I said in that post, this spot became one of my favorites in Budapest. So I ended up spending a lot of time walking around the area with my camera.
On one side of the trolley stop you can get some great light when the sun is out. It shines right into the old yellow and red trolley windows so if you expose for it, you can get some nice light and shadow effects with the people inside.
All three photos above were shot in the same way. The trolleys come every minute or two so I’d just walk along looking for anything interesting when each one would come. Then, with the settings exposed for the highlights, I’d quickly capture any interesting people or scenes I saw inside the trolley windows where the light was how I wanted.
The trolleys, colors, architecture through the windows, and the people inside them, all go along with a feeling I get in Budapest that I really like. An authentic, older city full of life.
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken in Budapest, Hungary by Fővám tér. There’s so much going on around this area that it became my favorite spot for Street Photography in Budapest. The variety of scenery and life is great.
One of my favorite parts of the area is the busy trolley stop in between the square and the Great Market Hall. There’s a good mix of people, the light is great, and I like the old yellow and red trolleys. The trolleys come on both sides every minute or two so sometimes I’ll walk around this spot seeing if any interesting shots come along on either side.
On one trolley side, you have the light shining and on the other, you don’t. So shooting manually, you do have to make sure you have your exposure settings constantly adjusted. For this shot, luckily I had my settings already adjusted for the dark side because it happened in an instant reaction.
I was walking along looking at something ahead of me when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a woman feeding a young boy a banana through the trolley window. It was such a weird moment/scene that I immediately reacted by turning, lifting up my camera and taking the shot before even thinking.
The fast reaction turned out to be necessary because as soon as I took the shot, the moment was over and the trolley was leaving. The reflection added something to the photo too, but for this shot it was all instincts and reaction before anything else.
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken in Budapest, Hungary at St. Stephen’s Square by the famous basilica. If you travel to enough cities, you start to notice there are cat cities and there are dog cities. Living in Istanbul, it’s overwhelmingly clear it’s a cat city. They’re everywhere. Budapest, on the other hand, is definitely a dog city.
Budapest is not a stray dog city, though. You’ll see people walking their dogs at all times around the city. Most are the smaller breeds too, with pugs and french bulldogs seeming to be the most popular.
For this shot, I wasn’t out looking for photos, but was walking to a café to do some work on my laptop. I always have a camera with me, though, and saw these two older women on a park bench with their dogs. They had an interesting look, to me, that went along with brown bench and green shrub background. They almost looked from a time in the 1970’s. They were both holding their small dogs in their laps too.
So I pulled out my camera and walked up to take their photo. The little chihuahua on the right was not pleased about it and went a little crazy, but despite the ladies’ expressions, they didn’t mind and let me take another. Unfortunately, there’s a little back focus in this shot, but I still prefered its candid and unposed look to the second shot. Here’s that second shot below, though, with that chihuahua still going crazy.
This Sunday’s Street Shot of the Week was taken in Budapest, Hungary at the Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal. This is one of the main train stations in Budapest and lies at the intersection of Grand Boulevard and Váci Avenue. So it’s in the heart of the city where there’s always a lot going on in the surrounding area.
I was staying only a couple blocks from here so I’d walk by it daily and usually stop to photograph around the streets outside of the station, where there’s good light and plenty of people. It’s not the largest station in Budapest, but sometimes I’d also take a quick walk inside to see if anything was going on.
From the distance, I noticed an older woman dressed in a long black wool coat with a pink wool hat. She was walking down the platform and with the sunlight and shadows, you could really only see her hat, almost like it was floating. So I hurried down the platform to get a closer shot. I tried to capture her with the floating hat effect, but also so you could see her long shadow in front. Then she walked into the shadow and onto the train, while I went back outside to capture more of Budapest.
