Working the scene in street photography is so important in order to capture a really strong, powerful image. Many photographers have to take a series of images in different angles and positions so that they end up with a incredibly strong and emotional piece of work. When you're working the scene, you would definitely need to take a collection of images so that you can find the best one out of them all. There is always that one image that just works in every way and this wouldn't work if you only have one image because if you have moved away from the scene and realised that something was misplaced in the image, you would not have a chance of finding it to be right in another image. Working the scene works best if you take a series of images and move around taking images every time you want to adjust something.
Here is some things to try…
Walk the subject – get all the distances
Shoot from far away – from the sides far away too
Shoot close up – from as many sides as you have access
Shoot from different angles
Take shots from high level
Take ground level shots
Use a foreground element in your photo
Use a background element to balance the shot
Work the light, try all the different ways to get the light on the subject
Eric Kim's take on 'Working the scene':
In both of Eric Kim's images above, you can see how a few images were taken before he decided on which one to use. The first image demonstrates angles. The middle image is so strong compared to the rest as in the other images, they're slightly bent and have things out of shot.When it gets moved to the right angle, we can now see that everything is in perfect lines and the image makes us feel sympathy for him as it makes it out as if he is trying to escape from the boats. In the second series of images, the last image was the one used by Eric Kim. We can see that he went from someone smiling to looking quite dangerous. We immediately get the impression that this man is bad due to the look on his face however, if it were a smiling image used, we would get a positive feeling from him. The smiling images look quite staged which makes them lack in being interesting whereas the last image makes it look like it was accidental ans it is strong as we can gin many stories from it.