Robin
I started doing street photography in 2009, right after my father passed away as a form of a grieving process. I coined the phrase shutter therapy, as the shooting process had therapeutic effects that helped me through some very dark and difficult times. I have called my street photography as shutter therapy sessions ever since.
To be entirely honest, my shutter therapy is not 100% street photography, but it is my own form of expression, capturing anything that catches my attention on the street. I’d like to think of it as going out with a camera on the street and just having fun, being myself. Since I do shoot professionally as a photographer, earning a living from paid shoots, these shutter therapy sessions become my escape from the more serious world of photography. Instead of meeting deadlines, or fulfilling the shot lists from the client, I can decide what, when and how I want to do my street photography sessions during my shutter therapy. It is an important creative freedom that I crave and need.
I shoot all kinds of subjects and genres when it comes to street photography. I have come to love doing portraits of strangers a lot. Either I do an environmental portrait of a person I meet on the street, showing the surrounding elements and background to support a more immersive story about that person, or a tight close up portrait. I enjoy them both equally, and I find so many thrills when I successfully capture a good street portrait image. Thankfully, people in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia are generally very friendly and are willing subjects for my shutter therapy sessions.
I will continue to do and enjoy my shutter therapy as often and for as long as I possibly can. Not only do I come home with a huge smile after each session, I look forward to the next with excitement.
Peter
I have always enjoyed urban environments. I have lived in Helsinki my entire life, except for one year in a small town in New Hampshire, USA.
This passion for urban environments naturally extends into my photography. The urban environment has always been my go-to location for photography. There is always so much to see and photograph. There are so many stories to tell and capture. The urban landscape undergoes significant changes over the years.
Over the years, my subjects and style have changed. About 20 to 25 years ago, I focused on street portraits with a style that was very different from today’s, and I held several exhibitions in Helsinki featuring that work.
Now, I am mainly interested in street art. I always look for someone interacting with a mural or graffiti. Since it is street photography, nothing is staged. I often wait by the art, pre-visualizing and imagining what might happen. Usually, nothing does, but sometimes I get lucky and must react quickly. Having a project helps a lot with photographing. There is always something to start with. The urban environment is characterized by a high prevalence of graffiti and murals. They are often repainted, and a new piece of art becomes available to be photographed.
Street photography can be done in many ways. There is no single right approach, which I love. It is not gear-centric but about creativity and imagination. That makes it both easy and challenging.
Matti
Ever since I got interested in photography, many decades ago, I was drawn towards journalism and documentary. Street photography to me is just that, documentary in urban environment. I can certainly appreciate beautiful landscapes and remote locations, but big cities and urban development have always interested me more when is comes to photography. Therefore street photography feels good to me.
I think it’s important to record our ever changing environment and at the same time we become more aware of what is happening around us. It’s also a lot of fun to see how fashion, cars and many other things have evolved over time, when looking at old photos. The change is apparent even in not so old photos, because the world around us is shifting at such a rapid pace.
Documentary is also one of the genres not under immediate threat by AI, because a document is what it is only if it’s real. In photography it means a real photo taken at a real location. That is another reason to shoot documents and keep your motivation up in these turbulent times.
When I’m out there shooting, I’m not only looking for amazing decisive moments, I’m also looking for mundane subjects or scenes, which look like they have a story to tell. In my mind I constantly arrange my photos to a story while I’m shooting. What do I have already and what would compliment those to create a compelling story.
Street and documentary is also a fantastic genre, because it’s not gear intensive. I like to keep my camera setup as simple as possible, just one camera with one prime lens. I feel the simplest gear frees my mind to creating instead of pondering camera settings.