Published January 8, 2026 · by Gary Rutherford
This is Maya, writing in for Gary's spot this month. Street photography is the course I most enjoy teaching and the one I'm asked most often to defend. So a few words about how we approach it.
The law and the contract
In the United States, in a public place, you may photograph anyone. That's the law. It is not the contract. The contract is what the photographer agrees to do with the photograph, and what the subject understands they were part of. Those are different conversations.
What we teach students to do
Three habits. First: shoot openly. Hiding a camera changes your posture and changes the picture. Second: be ready to talk. If someone notices and asks what you're doing, the honest answer — "I'm a photography student, I liked the light here, would you like to see?" — almost always defuses the moment. Third: delete on request. Always, without argument. The frame isn't worth more than the relationship.
What changes in 2026
More people carry cameras than ever, fewer people trust that strangers will use those cameras kindly. The work is harder than it was in 2010. The answer isn't to abandon the genre — it's to do it more carefully, and to take the conversations more seriously than the frames.