Street photography

I am into the second day of a three day course on street photography at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, it is absolutely fantastic  - we spent yesterday with the curator of photographs who gave a fantastic talk on the street photographers since 1860 and then we had a talk from a wonderful man called Charlie Philips who photographed life in Notting Hill in the 1960's from a political and historical point of view. I am now so out of my comfort zone but it feels good!  Today we spent the day walking through Notting Hill taking pictures and were told that it's all about shooting from the hip, or asking people if you can take their portrait and seeing what is around you.. Shooting from the hip means actually putting your camera on your hip whilst you look the other way, cough so they can't hear the click, then take the picture.  We were told to set our cameras to F11, shutter speed 125 and to be about 3 metres away from our subject, it is best to work in pairs so one distracts and one shoots. I found that by the end of the day even though my hip shots were very much hit and miss (putting my camera onto multiple shots does give you even more shots with a small chance of success), I found that my confidence was up so I was able to ask people if they would let me take their photographs!