Todd, I think it all has to be in the shot. It’s good framing for the scene.
I hope you’re composing even before you raise the camera. I’m not talking about trying to evaluate the scene with something like the rule of thirds. I’m talking about looking at enough street photography by people like HCB, Kertesz, Chim, Ronis, Brassai, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, etc., to get a basic feel for what needs to be included, then shooting and shooting and shooting until the whole process of framing and shooting is automatic. I don’t know whether or not you’ve ever read this:
https://luminous-landscape.com/on-street-photography/. It’s on LuLa. There’s a PDF copy on my own web at
http://www.russ-lewis.com/essays/OnStreetPhotography.pdf.
If you’re really doing street photography there’s no time to
think about a shot. You automatically raise the camera and shoot. Click! That’s it. More often than not you’ll have missed what you really were after, but then there’s the very, very occasional keeper that warms your heart because it was successful. That’s worth all the trouble it took to get it.
Todd, I'm not posting on LuLa any longer for reasons I've already put forth, but you can see a large and growing collection of my own street photography at
https://photopxl.com/forums/topic/some-favorite-street-shots/. PhotoPXL is slow and sometimes difficult, but as far as its content is concerned, it's a more than worthy successor to LuLa.
