by Editor Fernando Coelho
Edited and published by Yvette Depaepe, the ...  2025

A Street Photographer’s Journey Through Amsterdam’s Most Hectic Street

How do you capture the energy of a place?
How do you stay focused and avoid being overwhelmed by the visual stimuli?
How do you avoid feeling like you’re randomly shooting strangers?
How can you distill the essence, create a coherent narrative, and share it?

You must get close.
You must feel the energy.
The energy must be printed in your photographs.

How do you capture the essence of being there?
You wait for the perfect moments when motion and life align.
The contrast between motion blur and focus in a frame creates a dynamic tension. This tension guides the viewer’s eye through the image and emphasizes the narrative.
It helps if you aren’t looking only for the photograph but to make a series of photographs in motion that work together.
You need to feel it when looking at the reality you captured.

Come along, and I’ll share with you a recent afternoon on the most hectic street in Amsterdam: Kalverstraat.
Glimpses of humanity in urban entropy.

THE SETTING

Kalverstraat is a busy shopping street in central Amsterdam, running from Dam Square to Muntplein.
Named after a 17th-century cattle market, it has become a major commercial hub.
It is known for its many shops, from international brands to local boutiques, attracting tourists and locals.
A street that is a living example of the multicultural nature of Amsterdam. A city that is home to 180 nationalities. One of the most multicultural cities in the world.
It is a lively part of Amsterdam, mixing history, commerce, and culture.
No cars or bikes are allowed. Sometimes, it is so busy you need to queue to move.
My challenge?
A photography project aimed to convey this diversity and energy on a summer afternoon.

THE TECHNIQUE

Crowded and hectic place?
No better place to get close. Right?
Shooting at eye level, suddenly getting in front of someone, and panning their movements can be intimidating.
With so many people around, it’s better to choose a spot and shoot at waist level using your camera’s tilted screen.
Sit and fish.
It’s easy to blend in, but I try to be conspicuous. Usually, no one cares. If someone notices you taking photos, smile and show your true intentions.
The primary camera setting is the slow shutter speed. 1/8 of a second is my preferred setting. A proper balance that doesn’t completely wash out the background and allows you to get a reasonably sharp subject.
With the shutter open for such a large fraction of time, you need to lock your arms to your body and move like a tripod at the same pace as your subject.
There are many shadowed areas on a narrow street, so if I set the lens aperture to f/22, I rarely need an ND filter.

Other settings?

A wide focal length of 24 to 35 mm (full frame), continuous auto-focus, and face detection.
When you see your subject coming, let the camera focus on their face and burst three to five shots as they pass.
With a 24 mm focal length, razor-sharp subjects can be challenging, but that’s secondary. More important is the sense of movement and an upward short focal length perspective that dramatically fills the frame.

Black-and-white editing in Lightroom also plays a role. Clarity and grain are important, in addition to the usual increases in contrast and blacks and control of highlights.
Clarity increases mid-tone contrast. It compensates for the subject’s lack of sharpness and gives depth, enhancing the contrast between the subject and the rolling background.
Besides a retro look, a slight amount of grain adds texture. It gives the photo a gritty feel and dynamism. Grain also helps mask imperfections, creating a more cohesive look.
Let me know when you would like to have more details about the applied techniques.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE SERIES

You stop and choose a promising spot on one side of the street.
You abstract subjects from the frenetic pace of the surroundings.
You represent the surroundings as an abstract mix of shapes, light, and movement.
The blur is soft, showing dreamlike humans walking through the sweet chaos around them.
You pan and you burst shoot. You pan and you burst shoot. You pan and you burst shoot.
It is very physical.
You need energy to capture the energy around you.
And…you are comfortable with the idea that only 3% of your frames will be worthwhile to keep.

The photographs are part of the story you want to tell. They work better together.
In a hectic place like Kalverstraat, you can find almost everything.
I directed my afternoon project, observing humans:

·Who are there without being there

·Who show beauty, confidence, or preoccupation

'Determination'

Not really there

We live in the age of validation.
Our mobile phone (camera) and social media are an explosive combination that has changed how we live our lives without us noticing. How we document and share experiences, particularly in touristic locations.
A bizarre statistic is that many people have died as a result of taking selfies, either falling backward from clifftops, edging too close to fires, or being washed away by freak waves mid-picture.
Martin Parr’s street photography book “Death by Selfie” is a work worth admiring about our selfie obsession’s.
I cannot imagine deaths because of selfies taken in the middle of the touristic Kalverstraat. Still, I can certainly imagine people bumping into each other and small accidents while taking selfies, checking directions, or just exercising alienation while scrolling through social feeds.
People are there without being there.
They are trapped in virtual realms, documenting their lives for others to see.
Moving energetically with their legs and (also) their arms and hands with the aimless objective of checking in and showing it to the world.
The world will care for it only during a 1/8 of a second scroll.
I captured and beautified this reality with 1/8 of a second photographs.

The series below portrays people who appear to move fast in brief moments when they are absent ;-)

 Emotional states

The street is a laboratory of emotions. You can document expressions or body language directly associated with basic emotions.
The quest is to capture those emotions in their raw state. Candid. No staging or artificial light setup. No color associations to distract you from the primal message.
Just a touch of slow shutter at 1/8 of a second.
I leave you with a series I collected that afternoon in downtown Amsterdam.
The captions tell my version of the story, but it’s fun when you, the viewer, have other interpretations.

'I'm coming as fast as I can'

'I know it's warm but we're almost there'

'I still can't believe'

'Punk forever'

'Concealed'

Street Photography is not just about taking pictures; it’s about feeling the pulse of a place, understanding its rhythm, and becoming a part of its narrative, even if only for a moment.

Fernando Coelho – Medium