Shooting in a Crowded Place

Most casual photographers will snap a group shot by, well, snapping off a frame, without any further thought to getting a good result.
Here's a useful technique for making people shots stand out in a crowd.   If you just point and shoot the camera tries to get everything sharp.  This is exaggerated if using a wide-angle lens, so the result is a subject that blends into the background (in this case thousands of commuters heading off to work in Kyoto railway station).

So, if you slow the shutter down (ISO 360, f5.6 @ 1/10s) anything moving past the subject becomes blurred giving a sense of movement.  But you must have something sharp and clear in the image to make it work - your subjects must remain as static as possible.  There was no way I could set up a tripod in such a busy place so had to hand hold as best as I could.  The resulting [sharp] subjects literally jump off the page - compared to the bustling people streaming past in the station

My wonderful Japan group:
Kerrie Murphy, Marietta McGregor, Phil Young, Kerrie Dixon, Tamara Kitson, Denise Tolhhurst, Bob Baker and Sharon Carey