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| Becak – Bogor 2017 |
People may think that street photography genre is fun to do. No money to pay as the objects are available free in public area. Not too many tools , like tripod or expensive lenses have to be bought. You can use whatever gear available at your disposal, like smartphones.
Honestly, having crawled many streets, I really don’t think street photography is a “fun” genre. Many times, uneasy feeling raises inside.
Too many times that makes me feel that I have chosen a wrong genre.
There are too many times that I met people struggling with their life. As a human being blessed with empathy, seeing the struggle creates uneasy feeling. Often, it caused me to stop pushing the shutter release button because I was to overwhelmed with what I saw through the viewfinder of my Canon EOS 700D.
Being living in a country with big percentage of people living in poverty, such kind of people trying to survive are easy to meet. Even, if you are not intended to see, streets will provide you with many views of this situation.
It is not easy to avoid.
I face the situation too many times to learn that there are only two options, to capture the moment or to walk away without pushing my shutter release.
Honestly, after having my own struggle, I take the latter one. I am a street photographer and it’s my duty to capture whatever my mind says “interesting”. Besides, by capturing the struggle moment, I can also tell the world about what I see on the streets.
That’s the risk of my choice of being a street photographer. I must absorb that.
