Are You The Fearless Street Photographer?

I phone image of Fuji color reversal film from Ueno, Tokyo.

What is it to be a fearless street photographer?

Does that mean you get real close? Does that mean you photograph people? Does that mean, walking around firing a flash off and people's faces? What is it to be a fear of the street photographer? Take a moment to ask yourself, what does it mean to be a fearless photographer? Am I a fearless street photographer by my own definition?

I didn't mean any of those things.  It meant photographing the streets with reckless abandon. Not haphazardly, not in a chaotic way, destroying people's evening, sir, annoying everyone on the street around you, but the reckless abandon was rather in my heart, in my mind. I could see something, and I would do anything I could to get it, that is to say, anything within my own personal etiquette, to get the shot that I want. Over time, that slipped away.

It took fewer pictures, and I spent less time editing. My output dropped off almost completely.  I did spend time working commercially. I did spend time shooting fine art in the beautiful landscapes of Japan, but in between jobs, I always found myself wanting to go back to the street. The problem was that my heart was filled with fear.

It wasn't a fear of failure that I wouldn't be able to get the shot I could before.  It was different. It was deeper. It was a fear that the countless hours I spent on the street would amount to nothing. It was a paralyzing fear. The funny thing is, passion —real, true, honest-to-goodness, over-romanticized passion —is a lot more powerful than fear. It's more potent than fear because it contains substance. Fear, however, is simply a shield that we hold up to make us feel safe and comfortable. I realized I had been holding this shield of fear up for too long. 

I phone image of Fuji color reversal film from Ueno, Tokyo.

The summer was one of the hottest on record in Tokyo. The humidity and heat are overwhelming. It makes shooting with any kind of consistency challenging, even for those who need to be out every day. I often use the summer as a means of catching up on editing, writing, and fleshing out projects that are half-parsed out on scraps of paper. Traditionally, for me, this summer has become a time to reset; however, this summer, something different happened. I chose to purge my house from top to bottom. During this purge, I began to realize that what was once a promising photography career had been let go somewhere along the line. I had given up, not by choice, not by circumstance, but by time; it just faded away.

I figured all of this out as I cleaned my office, and I found old prints. I found binders full of old negatives. What was remarkable about these negatives was that most of them were shot in colour reversal film. This is a wonderful kind of film for shooting landscapes. The colours are amazing. The detail is fantastic. The problem with using it for street photography is that it's often a very low ISO, and its exposure latitude is very narrow.  So narrow in fact, there's very little you can do when an image has been under- or over-exposed; you really can't save it. Can't push it hard. It is what it is. So you're confined to that one frame of film, that's the fearlessness I'm talking about.

Taking a moment in time, maybe “the moment”, of time and freezing it on a medium that's poorly designed to do that. It looks spectacular when you nail the shot. I was young, and I had disposable income, and that's the film stock. I like to shoot. I had shot miles and miles and miles of black-and-white. In fact, I used to buy it in a big spool of a hundred feet at a time.  I made my own rolls of film and developed them all myself, but somewhere along the line, I was drawn into colour, and I started shooting colour reversal film. Maybe it's from my days at film school, it's perhaps from shooting landscape, I don't know, but I do know there was not an ounce of fear in my heart. I was taking on the city of Tokyo. I was taking on street photography, and I was doing it with colour reversal film.

I phone image of Fuji color reversal film, Tokyo subway self portrait

I don't feel like that anymore. Well, that's not entirely true. I do still feel it, but it’s buried.  I think the only way to cultivate that fearlessness is to shoot, come home, and shoot again, repeating the process day after day. Furthermore, not to shoot for the happiness of others, for their interest, for likes, or for clicks, but just for myself.  Now follow my heart. Follow my soul or my mind, but follow that fearlessness, follow that instinct, that is what will truly make me happy, and I believe that is truly what will make the best images possible.

So I'll reiterate my question: What is it to be fearless in street photography? Please take a moment to consider what it means to be fearless and free with photography. Follow that instinct.

As always, I would love to hear your story in the comments below. If you feel so inclined, share a coffee with me. I am a flat white kind of guy. Happy shooting, everyone.