How to Make Street Photography in a Small Town | Photography Tips & Observations
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ค. 2024
- In this video, I talk about observations I've made making street photography in my small town, and offer tips and ideas for how you can apply it to start documenting your town too. We can document life anywhere, because life is happening anywhere, we may just have to shift our expectations of what we'll find. You're documenting life and capturing the environment, and that in it's essence, can be seen as street photography.
Follow me on Instagram: / winslow_j
Sean Tucker's Video with Dan Baker: • Finding your Visual Vo...
Fazial's video I mention: • Is Street Photography ...
0:00 Intro
2:31 Shifting your expectations
3:22 Observations from my town
5:41 You don't have to have people in your photos
7:28 Inspiration from Dan Baker
8:13 Capture the Small Town atmosphere, not the city atmosphere
8:25 Tips to get you going
8:45 Get creative with framing / composition
8:58 Capture the mood / character of your town
9:07 Look for shadow, light, color, and texture
9:29 Go Downtown if possible
9:52 Shoot in different weather conditions
10:06 You never know what you'll find
11:16 If nobody's capturing your town, be the person who is
12:08 Documenting life, wherever it is, is street photography
12:35 Conclusion
#streetphotography #photography #photographytips
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I am so glad i just ran across this video. I live in a small town and jumped into street photography and have been wondering about how to do it. This helped perfectly.
I really enjoyed this video because it really hit home with me!! I live in a small town (population 9,000) and have had trouble photographing people because it seems they are suspicious of their photographs being taken - even though I have lived here for 40 years and am known. I have even attempted to photograph using my cell phone and old digi-cams so to not stand out carrying a DSLR. Again, a great video!! Best of luck in your photography journey!
Best,
Duane
I soooo get this video and relate. This is an amazing video. I love your town. So much character. Wow!
Definitely slower paced but not mundane,you have a good eye!
Thanks for the link to Dan Baker.
Cleethorpes wss the town i was born in but left 67 yesrs ago!
Keep shooting😊
Your video really resonated with me... well done... I grew up in Cleveland, OH... but the smallest town I ever lived in was this town in Iowa with a population of about 150 people... (I think that count included farm animals 😉) I was the only Black man living there, so photo walks were quite interesting... not a lot of blending in going on if you know what I mean... anyway, I have a background in music and portrait photography... so my work became about my experience of living in this really small town... which was often quite lonely... Sometimes, I pretended I was visiting a small foreign country... that part of Iowa had been settled by people from Norway... so not a huge stretch... the point is, you're right, really had to slow down, breathe, and challenge myself creatively to keep going... thank you.
Great video, definitely lots of good suggestions on where or what to shoot..especially in small towns. I live just north of Rhode Island, been there a thousand times and always without a camera, with lots of places by the ocean to capture is helpful, especially when you think there's nothing to capture. I'm inspired by this video to go out and get "downtown" and shoot, and walk and shoot. Thanks
Great video Jared. Calm and inviting to explore your town and mine. You should do a book Jared titled “My Town”
Sorry for my earlier question about the mains. But thank you for your idea to tell about our local environment and which can relate to historical events.
I'm grateful that this video reached me in a small town in southern Brazil! I'm going out to shoot, thank you!
I recently went through this mental reframing since I'm living in a very quiet rural place. One thing I keep in mind is that a view that seems so mundane and every day to me could be very interesting to someone in another part of the world. Also, there's a beauty in capturing the subtleness and nuance that surrounds us.
That's absolutely it!! Capturing the beauty in the mundane, what we see everyday could be beautiful and inspiring to someone else. Something amazing happens when we slow down and really look at our surroundings for what they are, instead of wishing they were something else. I fell into that trap for years, and it really opens your eyes creatively for what you can capture wherever you are.
Thanks for your video and tips/inspiration. I won a photo contest over 50 years ago with a photo that I took in your town. It is Bristol,RI right? I have lived in Northern California for the last 40 years but I still reminisce about New England towns. You don't need big cities to capture great street photography.
I really love what you're saying here. And I like your photographs a lot. I'd like to make a suggestion. Please reconsider the active film dust background you use behind the stills. They don't need it, and it really, really distracts from the images. It works under the titles where you've used it, but I find it very hard to see the still images with the visual destruction of the dancing motes around them.
Thank you for what you're doing, and keep up the good work.
This is a really good note and something I hadn’t considered, thanks for letting me know! Luckily this was the last video I did that in. Rewatching it now I totally see what you mean. Thanks for watching, I appreciate it! 🙏🏻
Agreed. Keep it clean as your images speak for themselves.👊
Sorry I was washing the pots and listening and missed the fact that you had shown Dan Baker's Name. I live across the river in the City and he photographs my childhood playground seaside experiences and thus brings back memories which is great for me as i don't have any photos of those days. But some good memories.
beautiful thank you your amazing
Nice video, beautiful places, very informative, super like 521, wonderful sharing my friend 👍🙂📸📷❤️😍😊
I have watched many videos on street photography, but your short one here, opened my eyes (and mind) to a whole new outlook. Thank you
I'm glad to hear that!! Street photography is a beautiful thing. Thanks for watching 🙏
Very well done - you got me thinking about my smallish town - thanks and subscribed.
I'm glad to hear this, thank you for watching!
His name is Dan Baker. Cleethorpes Lincolnshire UK. Yes I like his posts as well. Enjoy the pastel colours and maybe in your editing bring those out Pastels , thus developing your colour style.
Brilliant and inspirational. Thanks for sharing!
Very inspiring video and the presentation, your voice together with the music you've chosen is awesome!
Great video, very inspiring, thanks for sharing 👍
Thanks so much!! I'm glad to hear it. Thanks for watching 😌🙏
Your voice and the music sets the mood. Excellent video.
Thanks for the info. Good video. I am thinking about doing some street photography myself. I don't live in a big city either. So seeing your video is inspiring. Keep shooting bro. Oh and I just subscribed to your channel.
I'm glad to hear this man, thanks so much and thanks for watching! 🙏 hope this helps with your shooting journey. Enjoy the process!
Thanks man
Nice pace, interesting content, timely topic, great video! I live in a large but very rural county in Washington State, with one town of population 2000, the county seat. Several other towns with 500 or so people, and the rest is forest, mountain or pasture. Lots of nice scenery, so landscape photography is abundant, but I've been trying some street shooting as a change of pace. I'd like to add one more to your list of things to try. I start out each session by looking for light, lines and shapes. Once my eye gets 'tuned in', I start to see opportunities to add the human element. Sometimes, or often, it means finding a good composition and then having to wait for someone to walk through. Tempering expectations, as you mentioned, is key. But getting a good image under challenging conditions has it's rewards! I hope you do more videos on this theme! And, love the kitty in the window!
Excellent New England postcard. I love the exterior building colors. Great night shots. You captured the town. Thanks for your making this video and delivering these perfect images. Look forward to your channel updates!
Thanks so much Tyler! I appreciate you watching, and I'm very excited for what's ahead 🙏
Just found your channel today and was inspired by this video. I live in a small sea side town on the south coast of England and I too find it refreshing to just go out and shoot what I can find. Totally agree with you that you don't need a big city to shoot great images. Looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks for watching Tony! I’m glad you got something out of it 🙏🏻 it’s so true, we can find the beauty wherever we are, we just have to go out and look for it.
Always a joy seeing you've posted a new video! This is such an apt one for me as well. I've been trying to motivate myself to just go anywhere and see what happens. I'd always rather be out attempting to take photos over staying home sad I can't go somewhere "interesting" to a nonexistent idea of a person I imagined would look at my photos.
Thank you for watching!! Always appreciate your comments 😌🙏 that's the joy of street photography and capturing life in general, you never know what you'll find. It's also capturing the beauty in the mundane, which can be done anywhere as well. Keep going out there! Like I said in this video, I've taken some of my favorite photos here recently over the last few weeks, and I've never even considered shooting here until now
the first video ive seen on this subject that worked for me. thanks
Awesome!! So glad to hear that 🙏🏻
Nice work
Great video! And great shots!
Thank you Ryan!! Appreciate it 😌🙏🏻
This was extremely inspirational. I live in a smaller town...this gave me some great ideas...and motivation to go out and shoot...thank you so much!
Good!! I'm glad to hear that Jeff! Enjoy the process 😌
Good job ! Subscribed and liked. Keep it up. I am familiar with all of the street photographers that you mentioned in the video. Keep going.
Appreciate this James! Thanks so much
I was just looking up small town photography, and glad I came across your video. I’m from RI and this is all we have to work with
Aghhh crazy that you’re from there too!! Yess we can make anything work wherever we are 😌 highly recommend shooting in Bristol! It’s such a photogenic town with a ton of character. Thanks for watching and I hope it was helpful.
Thanks for this video. I’ve been in a really long slump recently and trying to get out there.
This is going to help me a lot.
Really glad to hear that Sam. Slumps are inevitable in the process, but I hope this helps out a little!
Really Enjoyed the video Jared. Refreshing and inspiring. Thanks!
So glad to hear that!! thank you for watching 😌🙏
Great video. Its slow, thoughtful cadence is worth practicing on small town streets where delight is often in details.
I appreciate this Mike, the delight is absolutely in the details when you're in a slower pace. Thank you for watching!
One of best vids covering this topic. Well done.
means a lot 😌🙏 thanks for watching!
Keep it up! Your videos are amazing
Thanks so much Angelo!! Means a lot. Thanks for watching 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Enjoyed that Jared I subbed you I live by the sea in a small sea side resort in England it slows right down in the winter time but summer can get very busy at times I like to shoot B&W mainly I like your photography and I understand what you mean about small towns I do go to big cities Mainly Manchester and Liverpool and do Street photography but not all the time its mostly on my door step that I do work.......
Really great points you make. My favourite is that we maybe the first to document our small home town. A real eye-opener!
I'm glad that resonated!! That was a big realization for me too...if nobody else is doing, it means we have the perfect opportunity to be the one who is.
Great ideas for my small town.
I'm glad to hear it!
Wonderful peaceful and thoughtful video which has refreshened my thoughts about photographing my small town.😊
I'm glad to hear this Steve 😌 hope it helps!
Great video Jared. I live in a small town in Iowa of 10,000 people and have been photographing the town, especially the downtown, on and off for over 15 years. Many of your photos of your town have a familiarity to me. I do go to the various festivals and parades that provide more people photographing opportunities. I shoot with a 50 mm lens.
That’s awesome!! Small town photography really does have a special/unique feeling to it. Extra special to document the small towns that may not have been documented before in the way you are as well, you’re preserving it. Thank you for watching!
Great video and vibe. 👏🏻
Appreciate it Alex, thanks so much! 🙏🏻
Love the picture of the dog in the window. Great one. Nice video
Thank you!! One of my favorites from the day, thanks for watching 🙏
wonderful video, I love it. I do something similar in my small village were I live, here in Germany. you are absolutely right, taking pictures in your neighborhood is a challenge but very intereseting.
Thanks so much! Agh it absolutely is a challenge, but also very rewarding for that reason. It also makes the work feel unique since it might not be a place that’s typically been photographed in the past, depending on where you are of course haha thank you for watching!
Inspirational. Thanks.
I'm glad to hear it! Thanks for watching 🙏
Enjoyed your video, thought provoking
Glad to hear that Steve! Thanks for watching 🙏
Thanks for your insights.
Thanks for watching! Hope it was helpful 🙏🏻
I enjoyed seeing your small town through your lens!
Thanks so much!! Definitely enjoy shooting here 😌
Well done! I think in the niche of street we get wrapped up in the big cities and forget about the towns or small cities we live in. There is a lot to photograph wherever you live. Just need to get out and find it 📸
Absolutely!! Well said 🙏🏻
@@winslow_j Thank you 🙏🏻
I became your 1000th subscriber because of this video ❤
Omg 😩🙏🏻 that’s amazing. I’m happy to have you here and the fact that you were my 1000th is even better 🥹 thanks so much!!
Thanks for Sharing Brother!
Great Tips, I'm going out to shoot my small town With a new mind set !
Aghh that's great to hear!! So glad you found it helpful. Thanks for watching, and enjoy the shoot 😄
100% yes.
thanks for watching!
I was watching your video, love it BTW, and noticed a bunch of scenes that looked so familiar and then saw the famous 4th Of July Parade route and realized you were in Bristol. I laughed out loud. We have been there many times to visit friends that grew up there. I felt like a local when I was there and even went to the Kinsmen for a few (too many) cocktails. You have a wonderful and historical town you live in and I would love to live there year round and photograph that beautiful New England town. Oh, my family is from New England, what a wonder area of the U.S.
Oh no way!! My god that’s so funny, what a small world! It really is a beautiful town and I’m lucky to have grown up there. Where are you based now?! It’s definitely a fun town to take photos in with a ton of charm. Thanks so much for watching the video, I’m glad you enjoyed it 🙏🏻
@@winslow_j Hey Jared, I am in upstate New York near Saratoga Springs. I loved Bristol, especially the down town and on the water in Independence Park. The boat building history of that town is pretty cool too. I see you are in NYC now, how do you like it. I could never get use to all the noise and general chaos of the city but know it's a great place for photography. I guess I'll always be a small town person. I'll keep an eye out for your videos going forward.
I live near small towns and in a rural area. I also visit many small towns as part of my job. I also love farms and old barns and homesteads. Rural areas and small towns have become my main interest because most photographers ignore them. I find rich history and culture in the small places. Thank you for a nice video on this subject.
I love this, and also sounds like a beautiful subject to shoot, especially since they're overlooked. History and culture always make for a great story. Thank you for watching!
Nailed the pronunciation on Cleethorpes! Really enjoyed this perspective as a fellow small town inhabitant 🙂
Glad to hear I got it right! haha thank you for watching 😌🙏
Thanks for this video!
I’ve lived in big cities like Vancouver, B.C. and New Delhi, but I found I had to make this same switch when I moved home to Salt Lake City, Utah, to take care of family business.
I knew I’d be here for at least a few years, so I decided to pivot my photography towards documenting a city that’s become one of the fastest changing/growing in the US. Part of that impetus came from my coming back from living in India for a few years and seeing how drastically my home town had changed in the time I’d been gone. A lot of the charm and history had been lost, so I made it a personal mission to document what was left and what it was turning into.
Right now it’s just a personal project on a separate IG account from my professional profile, but I’m doing it for the love of doing so. I’m finding the act of creating for the sake of creating incredibly fulfilling so far. Maybe some day I’ll publish the whole project, or maybe I’ll donate it to the city, who knows.
Anyways, great vid, keep up the good work!
I love this!! Thanks for sharing your story. Photography is such a powerful form of preservation and I’m sure the town would absolutely love to see the project if you decide to share it with them. Even if not, the joy and fulfillment that it brings is what it’s all about. I always love seeing how our photography changes with us depending on our season of life. I’m going through it right now with a move I just made to New York City. My work feels very different, and I’m navigating through what I want it to look like and what I want to capture as I move along. It’s a never ending journey, and that’s what makes it so exciting. Thanks so much for watching, and for sharing! 🙏🏻 keep it up and good luck with your project
I love this video!!! I live in a small town and sometimes I can't find anything interesting to shoot. But now with your tips it will be different!! Thanks a lot!! 🙏🏻
One question: Is it possible to take pictures of people and monetize the video on TH-cam without being sued?
Just found you, Jared. Roman Fox is a big influence on my my street photography. My small town has down town of two streets that are cross roads. We only have about 2000 people. I am used to going to Melbourne, about 3 hours by train, just to do big city street. I have often thought of doing street at home, but struggle with the so different vibe. Your video has inspired me to see it differently and definitely worth trying. Cheers from down under.
Glad to hear this David!! Similarly, my town had a downtown area that consisted of one road and a couple small side roads off of it. Even still, there's a character that can be captured of the town itself all over. Thanks for watching and enjoy the process!!
I personally love the work of William Eggleston, truly inspiring. 🙏🏻
His work is amazing! 🙏🏻
Very, very well done, Jared. I live in a small town & do a lot of shooting here. Since it’s usually fairly quiet (& I’m always concerned about bothering people), most shots are sans people. You are right - we are street shooters - documentarian/environment shooters. It’s kinda like “a rose is a rose,” right? Different places, different atmospheres, different personalities, different experiences - but we’re all photographers, shooting life as we discover it.
Well said! That's exactly right. No matter what or where we're shooting, we're documenting life as we see it through our eyes. I also find it fascinating how two people can take photos in the same place and come away with totally different photos. It's all very fascinating. Thank you for watching.
Empty spaces, full of sensations and emotion. nostalgic American streets that release film clichés. I let myself be carried away by the soul of these photos which speak without voice or movement. I am far away from you. but I felt what the image wants to communicate to us.
Your comment; these images of the united states of america; I dedicate them to posterity.
Interesting video, thanks.I’ve been photographing my smallish town for a while, here in the UK. One thing I’ve noticed more of, as time has gone on, is how many more security cameras and Ring doorbells have been cropping up everywhere, even in the ‘poorer’ (ie more photographically interesting 😉) areas of town. I’ve seen posts on local Facebook groups saying, ‘this person was taking pictures of my house, be wary People’ (not me, as far as I’m aware!) It’s making my photography task (which is just a hobby) so much more difficult when people are going around thinking I’m some kind of criminal. Sigh!
Oh woww that sounds like a super interesting story to capture as well, the changing of the town with the security cameras going in, almost feels very big brother haha yikes! the unfortunate part is people who don't necessarily understand photography/street photography, think it's something weird or criminal, when in reality, we're just documenting life and how environments change over time. People will always think that! But I think it's how we go about it, and you may have a very interesting story on your hands to capture. I think if anyone ever asks, you could say you're a photographer documenting how to town changes over the years. You're doing nothing wrong, so I hope you continue to enjoy it!
Rich people have had cameras all over their properties for decades. Nobody complained. Now that they're more accessible and poorer people start to use them, suddenly people feel caught. Textbook double standards. Maybe we should rather talk about why people feel the need to install this stuff, i feel like that's the actual problem. In public places, Big Brother in the UK has been a thing for quite some time now. I find it horrible. Surveillance absolutely everywhere, cameras at every corner in the big cities, and what they did with INDECT during the Olympics was literal 1984 dystopia. I wouldn't be surprised if they use a similar program all day long now, I'm sure they at least will be once AI solutions become more refined. This stuff makes me really uncomfortable. I'm glad I don't live in Britain...
Street photography documents public life to share knowledge and culture, to enable people access to art that's relatable for normal people. It makes you think and question the normality of everyday life. Depending on the times you live in, what's going on in the streets, it can even transport and amplify revolutionary potential. Surveillance, on the other hand, documents public life to exert control and scare people away from being different and noticeable. Go drown in the sea of grey, boring conformity, otherwise you will be focused by the authorities.
Soooooo good bro
Appreciate you man 😌🙏 thanks so much
I’ve been shooting Bristol for years. Nice video.
No way! Means a lot to have someone also shooting here watch this, it's a special town for sure. Thank you and thanks for watching 🙏
Love this! I’m getting into street photography. I’m working with a canon ae1 program. What film would you recommend for night photography?
Thanks so much!! Agh I have the AE-1 program too, it's such a great camera. For night time, I'd recommend Cinestill 800T. You can also look at Lomography 800. Excited for you with the journey just starting! Good luck and have fun with it!
Being smalltown oriented, your photos remind me of the kind I might see from William Eggleston or William Chrisenberry. They shot rural/small town South instead. I play in a medium sized town. I have an old small Sony digicam 4mp camera that I carry around my neighborhood, for similar film-like images.
Wow that’s a big compliment, thanks so much!! Really love egglestons work. Small cameras are so much fun and the 4mp for a film look must be a ton of fun to play with. I’ve been hearing a lot about the digicams lately, I’m sure I’ll end up getting one to play with one day
@@winslow_j The way I look at it is that who needs another picture of NYC or SF? Those cities are photographed by literally millions of people per year. It's hard to wind up with a unique take on that. But small towns do have their uniquenesses, and a small town in California, Oregon or Wyoming have far different feels to them than in your area of New England. Moreover, small towns are something that many people from Chicago, San Francisco or NYC rarely if ever get to see. Or countryside for that matter. Los Angeles is not all that far from Yosemite National Park, and you'd probably be surprised how many people from Los Angeles have never been to Yosemite.
@@winslow_j BTW, there is a guy named Jim Hill who takes photos in Chicago and its burbs but also wanders out into the small farm towns of Illinois. He has some great shots on Flickr of this. There is a number of Jim Hills on Flickr, but when I type in Jim Hill in a search engine his is the top result. Or type in his handle which is ajimhill. I love those small midwest towns and their look.
Bristol is the best!
💙💙👍👍👍👍👍👍
I lived a few miles from Chicago the first 65 years of my life. We moved to a small rural town pop. 5,600 in 2016, it was certainly different! I concentrated on landscape photography because the novelty of rural farm life. Then started photographing 'in town' especially night photography. My local FaceBook postings were getting great comments and many likes, in fact I published a zine through Blurb with only night images, I sold over 60 copies. I'm not getting rich, but I do it for the joy of taking and sharing my images. I side note, none of my photos include people, I'm more interested in shapes, textures, light and documentation of the current conditions which are not always favorable or glamorous. Walker Evans has always been an influence to my photography, I shoot digital printing in B&W and color and the occasional infrared.
I love this! Thank you for sharing. I’d be interested in hearing how you feel the move from Chicago to a small town might’ve influenced your photography, if at all. Very cool that you released a zine too, I’m sure the local community appreciate having a physical form of the town in their homes. I think it’s really interesting as well how our photography changes, and what we’re interested in photographing changes depending on our season of life. It’s always evolving with us, and that’s something I love about it. Thanks for watching and for sharing!
@@winslow_j Much of my earlier photography was architecture of the city both commercial and industrial. Moving to a rural community forced me to seek beauty and interesting subjects in the vast flat landscape of soybean and corn fields. I also sought out State Parks to work on my woodland photography. One new genre I never tried was night and astro photography, the skies are much darker a few minutes from our house to get great Milky Way and star trails images. Another zine I published was "Rural Skyscrapers of East Central Illinois" which I photographed 80+ grain elevators stacking 3 - 12 images to decrease distortion. The images contained from 1 to 16 silo bins, mostly next to rail lines in the center of town.My current project is to photograph, document, small local towns in color. It's more about people than of people. You don't find many people walking the streets of a town of 5,000 let alone towns with populations less than a 1,000.
Nice video. You don’t have to include a person or an animal in the picture but doing so gives a sense of scale.
That is a good point! It adds another element for sure. Thanks for watching 🙏
Had to stop half way through to comment. Don't get too hooked up on labelling your genre of photography. Your town is full of opportunities to shoot, and I would rather see your authentic style in this environment than try to make it something it's not. To me living in Australia your town looks straight out of a movie, with its flagged porches and that Fire Station! It's probably one of those situations where everyone thinks the grass is always greener in someone else's town!
This is a good reminder! I like to think I'm a life photographer, not just street, because I try to shoot whatever I think is beautiful. But my favorite style is street and I always see through that lens, so I get caught up in saying "I'm a street photographer". It really is a beautiful town! a classic example of new england architecture, and it was nice to see it with fresh eyes with my camera. Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts 🙏
Exactly my thoughts.
We always tend to consider our surroundings “normal” but in times of TH-cam and instagram, your “normal” is special to people like dobbs from Australia or me from Germany.
Being native English speaker is a big pro on your journey to showing your art to the world.
A smaller town in the US? My question is not directly photographic. But why is the electricity grid so badly installed in poles? It really looks a bit underdeveloped. In Sweden, where I live, there are no power lines in poles. All power is distributed in cables in the ground, except for the national power grid. Excuse my question in this forum.
Regarding long focal lenses: I think it's not quite that easy. Is it still street photography? Sure. But I really don't like the voyeuristic style of standing 150 meters away and taking a full body shot of someone doing something completely normal. Those are simply not great photos, no matter the genre. It doesn't tell any relevsnt story, but only something like, "A guy is watering his bush." The fundamental idea of street photography is to find something special in the mundane and ordinary. Sniping people from a paparazzi position with a long lens almost never achieves this. There's a reason so many people use wide lenses. It's not just, "Look at how cool and brave I am to stand right in front of the people I photograph!!"
Still, as I said, this doesn't at all mean you can't use long lenses. Saul Leiter used a 90mm lens VERY often. The thing is that you need to think about how to use it and why. If the only reason for using s long lens is that you can photograph people from far away where they don't see you, that's not enough. That's a reason for you as a person, it's about your fears, but it's not about your actual photography, and the images it produces. Great opportunities to work with long lenses would, for example, be to create abstraction - if you don't want to show a scene directly, instead crrate some mystery and questions; or to focus on layering, which can be a lot more pronounced and noticeable on a long lens; or to portray geometry, or highlight specific focal points - like how Saul Leiter often focused on umbrellas; or to play with reflections, which work a lot better when using a long focsl length. Stuff like this. Whatever your reasons are, they should be about image, artistic, and not simply about you being scared. You can of course still be scared, but you should change the style of your pictures when switching lenses. There are _still_ endless possibilities of what you can do using a long lens. It's just that sniping people doing things from far away will not produce good, meaningful pictures. You will look like a stalker instead and the image says more about you than about the story you should be telling.
Summa summarum, you can do great street photography with using long focal lengths, but you need to think about actual artistic reasons for how you use it and adjust your approach accordingly.
Using a zoom lens is not voyeristic. It’s a way to not be seen and avoid a confrontation. Do you expect street photographers to be in people’s faces? Try doing that in New York City, in our communities of Harlem. I am usually 10 feet away from people and I shoot from my shoulder, hip, sides. There is nothing that says one has to use the electronic view finder to take a photo. I also use my LED screen on the back of the camera. You are inserting your bad perception into this process.