[Tip] look at as much street photography as you can handle.

 Absorb a lot of street photography.

 I can handle a lot and so, I am sure, can you. It’s not just fun and inspiring but it starts to inform how you see. Not just from one perspective but many. It doesn’t make you any of the people whose work you observe but it starts to help you align the elements of what you see in ways you may not have otherwise thought of. 

Look at all the work you can. Your tastes in the subject will undoubtedly transform and the work you wished you could produce may no longer speak as loudly as that of one that you didn’t formerly understand. It’s all good. You’ll see things you want to do done by some and things you’ll want to avoid done by others. With repeated and varied viewing you will incorporate a great many things without even noticing (for a while at least). 

Don’t worry about copying. You can't copy street photography. 

Each image and each moment are unique. They only happen just like that - one time ever. 

You can copy a technique but when, where and how you apply it are yours. Add all the influences together with a healthy dose of you and your backstory - and the mix you get will be uniquely you. 

It takes a while until it is more easily recognised as you but it most certainly is. 

I look at street photography all the time (as well as many other genres that I like) and I know I have been heavily influenced. 

My preferred viewing is of the classics. I hesitate to say masters due to the fact that there are some great photographers today that have mastered their subject. Classics are of course masters but you know they are older and have stood the passage of time.

As for copying, don’t worry. You can only really be inspired by the work of another street photographer as I mentioned earlier.

Each of the people you are inspired by was in turn inspired by someone else. Even at the beginning of the photographic age, photographers were inspired by painters and even, I imagine, writers. 

Many if not all of the greats acknowledge their inspirations. 

Having said all that, there is no substitute for practice. You have to create an awful lot of images to get to the point where you aren’t thinking but doing. 

One day someone will ask how you know what to photograph, where to place the subject(s) and many other things and they’ll want to know how you do it so quickly and effortlessly. 

When that happens remember to tell the truth, you were inspired by many and you walked a lot (usually with a camera).