How many of you are Street Photographers here? Need Tips

Okay, I see from your response above that you're using a Nikon D3100. That's a great DSLR to start off with. If you're working with the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens that normally comes with the D3100, you're going to face a few challenges. The biggest one is that the range of focal lengths is going to be really limiting. You're going to have to get in pretty close to your subjects if you want to fill the frame with them, which can be a bit uncomfortable if you're trying to shoot candid portraits. But on the other hand, 18mm is a good focal length for capturing wider scenes like interesting buildings. There is also the fact that the 18-55mm isn't a very 'fast' lens... that is, it doesn't have a very wide maximum aperture opening. That can be challenging if you're working in low light conditions because you might not be able to use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze a subject's motion, or it might mean that you need to use a tripod to get a shot. As far as getting the light right goes, trust your camera's light meter. I normally pick my aperture setting first based on the depth of field I want in my shot, and adjust the shutter speed until my light meter says that I have the correct exposure. If you're wanting to capture motion, then pick the shutter speed first and adjust the aperture to match it. You can freeze motion by using a fast shutter speed, or you can capture it by using a slower shutter speed like 1/30th of a second or longer. In general, the best piece of advice I've been given about shooting digital photos is to overexpose the shot by about 1/2 to 1 full stop. You can correct the exposure in post processing with a program like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, but the benefit of overexposing your shots is that you'll get less noise in the blacks and darker areas of your photos. I hope this will be helpful to you. If you have any specific questions about photography, feel free to ask me. I shoot Nikon too, so I might be able to help you with any camera questions you have.

The very first thing that I would do would be make sure that I'm shooting in RAW mode, not just JPEG. You should find the settings in your Image Settings menu under Image quality. I have my D90 set to shoot NEF (RAW) + JPEG fine. You really want to shoot in RAW mode for one reason: it records all of the data from the camera when it takes the picture. There's a lot of benefits to it, but the biggie is that you can fix messed up exposures a lot easier with RAW than JPEG in post processing. I would also check your ISO settings (also in the Shooting Menu, under ISO sensitivity settings). The ISO settings control how sensitive your camera's image sensor is to light. A low number, like 200, means your sensor isn't very sensitive to light. You can use longer shutter speeds and/or wider apertures with a low ISO. Because you're shooting in low light conditions, you're going to want to set that ISO setting fairly high. I'd start off with around 800-1000, and go higher if I needed to. You'll have more noise at 800-1000 than at 200, but you'll be able to use faster shutter speeds so you're not getting blurry pictures. Unfortunately, there really isn't much of a way to tell you which settings will be best to use. It all depends on how the lighting conditions are that day. What I would do would be start off with a few test shots at f/3.5 and whatever shutter speed I needed to get the exposure right, then go from there and adjust it. If you're not really comfortable in manual yet, try Aperture Priority mode. That's the A on your mode dial. Aperture Priority will let you pick the aperture setting, and then the camera will choose the shutter speed for you. You could try the Night Portrait mode, too, and have the camera pick all of the settings. There's a lot to remember when you're in control of the camera. Don't let that get in the way of enjoying your event. Set the camera to full auto if you feel like you need to. Having the photos as mementos is a lot more important than the settings your camera was on when they were taken.