LOCATION & ME
I live in a small
town in the northern Finland close to the Arctic Circle. I have been
photographing for many years and for a long time I concentrated mainly on
landscapes (or any scapes for that matter) and abandoned buildings combined
with a lot of HDR shooting and heavy post processing. After some time I felt
like I have been shooting in every possible location, in every possible light
and from all possible angles. It was around that time I somehow found street
photography, got interested in it and realized that in this genre I will have
endless possibilities for new shots! Ever since I have been training my eyes to
see the things we otherwise so easily miss in our ‘busy’ everyday lifes.
SEASONS
The seasons in Finland and especially in the northern part of Finland clearly divide the year into four phases. During the Summer the days are long and warm and the nights are bright, we have the midnight sun and just by looking out of the window you can’t tell if it’s 9 p.m. or 4 a.m. The Winter on the other hand is cold, the days are short, there’s a lot of snow and above the arctic circle the sun won’t rise at all for many weeks and I find that polar night period both magical and inspiring; the days around the winter solstice is my favorite part of the year! The Spring is when the snow melts away and the nature wakes up and everything seems possible. The Autumn is when the flourishing scene of the summer gets autumn colors, slowly fades away day by day and the nature prepares itself for the long and cold winter. I enjoy all seasons, they all have their own beauty and they provide different scenes, settings and ambiance for a photographer.
The seasons in Finland and especially in the northern part of Finland clearly divide the year into four phases. During the Summer the days are long and warm and the nights are bright, we have the midnight sun and just by looking out of the window you can’t tell if it’s 9 p.m. or 4 a.m. The Winter on the other hand is cold, the days are short, there’s a lot of snow and above the arctic circle the sun won’t rise at all for many weeks and I find that polar night period both magical and inspiring; the days around the winter solstice is my favorite part of the year! The Spring is when the snow melts away and the nature wakes up and everything seems possible. The Autumn is when the flourishing scene of the summer gets autumn colors, slowly fades away day by day and the nature prepares itself for the long and cold winter. I enjoy all seasons, they all have their own beauty and they provide different scenes, settings and ambiance for a photographer.
The cold
weathers of the Winter of course bring some difficulties for a street
photographer. You can’t hang out on the streets as long as you could on a nice
summer day, you gotta have your gloves on so your camera handling isn’t that
smooth and fast, and of course there’s very little ambient light available so
you need to have your gear suitable for low light, i.e. nice high ISO
performance since you’re shooting hand-held and tripods are out of the question
obviously! Battery life decreases in cold temperatures and in very cold weather
I often keep my camera on a neck strap under my jacket to keep it somewhat
warm. That of course makes picture taking much slower and those ‘decisive
moments’ can be easily missed. In the winter I find myself more prone to shoot
in pre-considered settings and waiting for that right moment, the right kind of
person or element to walk into a frame than just walking
around and being ready to shoot whatever makes the shot worth shooting.
OPPORTUNITIES
Since my hometown is small (population around 18.000) there aren’t too many places to go for street photography; just the few main streets downtown etc. I have walked the downtown streets of my hometown clockwise and counter-clockwise countless times. Still almost every time I’m able to see something new somewhere and that is the beauty of street photography! After you have shot a certain landscape a few times in different light, different time of the year, different weather and different time of the day, you have pretty much covered it. But when you go out on the street, you never reach the ‘everything has been recorded’ –level and the frustration that comes with it.
Since my hometown is small (population around 18.000) there aren’t too many places to go for street photography; just the few main streets downtown etc. I have walked the downtown streets of my hometown clockwise and counter-clockwise countless times. Still almost every time I’m able to see something new somewhere and that is the beauty of street photography! After you have shot a certain landscape a few times in different light, different time of the year, different weather and different time of the day, you have pretty much covered it. But when you go out on the street, you never reach the ‘everything has been recorded’ –level and the frustration that comes with it.
I don’t
think I could do much better in a big city. No matter how big is the city
around you, the things that you can see, they still happen close by, around you
in your proximity. It’s just that in a bigger city you can move around more and
you see more people interacting with their surroundings. That I often miss.
Bigger town
of course means more streets, more possible locales and thus more opportunities
perhaps, but still it’s all about your vision and your sensitivity to let
yourself really see the things that surround you. You could make great street
photography even in the smallest of rural villages if you have an open mind and
see beyond the veil of our daily fuzz. The images are there, that’s for sure.
As photographer Gregory Heisler once said; “you should be able to draw a five
foot circle around you where ever you are and still be able to take a good
picture”. I agree 100%. The images are there for sure, you just have to find
them and see them. Sometimes you may have to wait for all the pieces to come
together and thus creating the scene for a street shot but very often it will
happen if you have patience.
I work both
in pre-considered settings and by intuition and reflex. And let’s not forget
pure luck! I think street photography at its best is a combination of vision,
imagination, consideration and luck. Sometimes when all the pieces come
together, it is a magical moment and you know it when you press the shutter
release. You can see the image in your mind before it is even recorded. I find
it almost spiritual.
SHOOTING STYLE
I try to blend in the crowd while doing street photography. I walk around with my camera on a neck strap. When I see an interesting subject or scene evolving I get closer without raising my camera and often even looking elsewhere, walking casually. When at shooting distance depending on the situation I either raise my camera for a shot or I make a hip shot. I have a fixed focal length lens in my camera so it’s easier to learn to estimate the field of view for hip shots. I rarely need to straighten or crop my hip shots; I get them right in the first place. Practice, practice and practice. Life teaches us the hard way. For a photographer the camera is a tool; you need to study and master your tool so that handling of that tool becomes second nature. This is especially the case in street photography since there often is no time for trial and error.
I try to blend in the crowd while doing street photography. I walk around with my camera on a neck strap. When I see an interesting subject or scene evolving I get closer without raising my camera and often even looking elsewhere, walking casually. When at shooting distance depending on the situation I either raise my camera for a shot or I make a hip shot. I have a fixed focal length lens in my camera so it’s easier to learn to estimate the field of view for hip shots. I rarely need to straighten or crop my hip shots; I get them right in the first place. Practice, practice and practice. Life teaches us the hard way. For a photographer the camera is a tool; you need to study and master your tool so that handling of that tool becomes second nature. This is especially the case in street photography since there often is no time for trial and error.
Having a
discrete, small and quiet camera is a very big advantage for any street
shooter. I use a Fuji X100s and I totally love it. With such camera you can be
taking shots and no one will notice it. As a street photographer you want to be
an unobserved observer, a ghost with a camera. Most of the times I succeed in
that mission and this too is something to be learned and mastered. I feel I’m
getting better day by day. Who knows,
perhaps next year no one will never notice me. I hope so!
Shooting
street is documenting the life around us. It must be candid and unposed. In
that sense the ability of the photographer being unnoticed is a fundamental
element. I cherish that thought and I wish to be unseen. I shoot for myself,
for my own amusement and for that little hope that some of my shots would finally
outlive me and remain to be seen by the audiences who appreciate photography,
photographic telling, history, humanity, beauty and feelings. It’s all I will
ever ask for.
Shooting in
public places in my country is everybody’s right. However it’s not allowed to
publish photos showing people in degrading way; someone laying passed out in a
pool of feces and vomit and such. Sometimes when I wonder the streets with my
camera I meet people who I would certainly not meet otherwise and sometimes
total strangers want to have their photograph taken. Taking a photograph is a
term I dislike; you can’t take
anything from this world, not even a photograph. You can just record individual
moments as sounds and images. Recording a moment as an image for me is making a picture. We as photographers record
images; we make pictures. And we all hope our pictures are being remembered.
