Olli Jakonen is a guy, who cruises between Finland to Estonia and captures streetlife here and other side of the sea. He has found his style in photography and as a finn he loves shooting street in Estonia.
We talked with Olli about how he found street photography, who he approaches it and what he thinks about street photography in Estonia.
How and when did you discover street photography?
I have been photographing since I was quite young as my father is a photographer and I’ve always had a camera at my disposal as well as guidance on how to use it. Some travel photos I took in 2013 and 2014 on trips to Paris and London were quite street photograph-ish but back then I didn’t know what street photography was. I would say I started getting into street photography between 2018 and the summer of 2019, which at the time of writing was four-five years ago.
Back then I bought a Sony mirrorless camera (Sony A7) as well as two zoom lenses that I started out with. Many of my street photographs in the beginning were with a 70-200 F4 lens. I would say also a trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow in 2018 was a pivotal event for realizing how exciting street photography with lots of action all around can be.
What does street photography mean to you? Why do you shoot on streets?
I think many things and for many reasons. It is a way of connecting with the cities I am living in or visiting as well as a technique to try to experience them in a previously unfamiliar way. It is also an interesting challenge: how to make use of or capture the elements or brief moments that the cities offer. There is also a personal therapeutic element in that photographing people is a way of overcoming shyness or feeling closeness to strangers around me that would otherwise just be socially distant passers-by.
Who or what has influenced you the most in photography? Do you have any favourites?
Inspiration and examples by many photographers I know have been and continue to be invaluable in steering what I aspire to do myself and what I end up attempting. Most of my inspirations I have discovered through Instagram. While I can’t mention them all here, I especially love bold and complex use of colour. I would say Josh Edgoose (@spicy.meatball) set the standard and introduced a consistent style of colourful and funny photos that I have tried to emulate. Harry Gruyaert is a great inspiration in his use of colour and contrast. Greg Girard’s work (of which not all is technically speaking street photography but urban documentary photography) is exciting, beautiful and honest. I also love Alex Webb.
How often do you get to shoot on street?
Whenever I have free time and there is an inspiring weather. During summers I do it maybe 1-2 times a week, sometimes more. Even if I have lots of time to do it, I never feel like I am doing it too often. It is always fun, even if I don’t end up posting the results.
How did a finn ended up shooting streets in Estonia and why exactly do you shoot here?
I moved to Tallinn in January 2021 for a PhD program. In the beginning street photography was a way to make sense of the new place I am living in. In terms of density of people and busyness it was also an upgrade from my hometown Turku in Finland.
As a Finn in Estonia, I feel a useful distance to the people here in Tallinn that allows me to approach street photography differently than I did when I was a Finn in Finland. I like to shoot in Estonia for many reasons but it is also interesting to see elements of the Soviet past alongside the present day.
Do you see any differences shooting in Tallinn or in Helsinki? What do you think, how is street photography scene doing in Finland and how are things in here, in Estonia?
As I mentioned before, being at least somewhat of an outsider makes it a bit easier to shoot here in Estonia. As for other reasons, I think I have had some more confrontations by people I photograph or people thinking they are photographed in Finland than in Estonia. Based on a chat with a fellow Tallinn photographer Martti Lepmets, perhaps both Finns and Estonians sometimes judge you but Estonians do it quietly.
Otherwise, I think Tallinn has more interesting environments that can sometimes be a bit rugged, Linnahall as an example. For street photography, I prefer things and environments to not be too neat and tidy. One difference is that in Tallinn the city center is accessible simply by walking whereas in Helsinki you have to make a conscious decision about the area in which you will shoot and travel there. I do like the fact that Helsinki has a metro system, it is a classic and an always interesting urban environment. In terms of the street photo scene in the two cities, I think both are doing quite well which I am happy to see.
How do you approach while shooting on street, do you search for interesting characters or you search for light and shadows?
I think almost anything goes for me but I especially look for interesting colour combinations. juxtapositions and compositions of multiple people in one frame. After buying and starting to use a 28mm lens more I started to photograph more groups of people to try to get a feeling of interaction between the people in the photos. When you are up close with people with a wide angle lens, you can catch interesting facial expressions, glances and movements. I often take photos while moving through a crowd with a sufficiently fast shutter speed. For me personally, 28mm is at the same time the most challenging but potentially rewarding focal length in street photography. I also use 55mm a lot.
You often take photos from a low angle and quite close. How people react to that?
Whenever I can, I try to take candid shots where people are unaware and unaffected by the camera. When I was showing some shots from a photo walk some years ago to a friend of mine, she called my style shy. That made me reflect on that and try to get closer to subjects. Generally speaking people are quite indifferent, don’t notice it or probably forget the moment of photography quite quickly. Overall, it is important to make it clear for yourself what you want and do not want from your photos and to respect people accordingly, even if public places allow you to document others.
There is still a lot to learn about how to explain what you are doing when taking street photos or how to react when people do come up to you. During a photowalk last autumn I took a photo of a French tourist woman walking past and they came up after me startled. We had a conversation where I tried to explain what I was doing and for what reasons. She was scared of some criminals following her and told me she had had some experiences like that recently and was scared that it would happened again. I was frustrated about her not understanding my good intentions as a photographer. However, she listened patiently as I tried to explain what street photography was. She knew Cartier-Bresson and at the end of the conversation we parted ways with her interested in street photography. That was an important lesson for me about learning to be more patient and how to try to deal with those situations. One concrete way I have been planning is to print a small notebook with my street photos to also show what it is about.
You share quite interesting photo series on Instagram. How do they happen and how do you usually put them together?
They are usually picked from a single photo walk on one day. I try to arrange them so that photos complement each other and to include a balance of different kinds of shots, close-ups and more distant ones.
Recently, I have started posting more single photos to try to detach them from a singular point in time (such as one day) so that they could represent something more. However, I still think both single photos and series have an important place on what I present to others.
How much do you invest in editing?
While I enjoy it, I would say too much. I feel my editing can still be a bit scrambled but it’s slowly getting more coherent as I am learning through trial and error. I am aiming for a sufficiently coherent style without sacrificing the unique elements that each photograph has to offer.
Can you share a story of how one of your picture got taken.
Absolutely! I included a photo with a mother and a baby taken in the Turku riverside. This photo was shot on Fuji C200 film and with a Yashica Electro 35 GSN camera with a 45mm lens in 2020. I believe it is from the second roll of film I ever shot and was maybe the first street photograph on film that I was very happy with. I wanted to make the best of the roll I was shooting so I wanted to be more courageous about photographing people. Shooting on film often gives a different kind of confidence because I think people might be more accepting and interested on film photography in the digital photography age.
I approached a group of about 4-5 people by the riverside and asked the mother if I could take a photo of her and the baby. She agreed and – being a beginner – I took my time manually focusing. She was looking at the other people in the group while the baby took a professional dramatic pose. I thanked her for the opportunity and quickly moved on. I think their shadows and the shadow of a tree or a bush are the finishing touches for me. The result resembled documentary street photos on film I had seen elsewhere and was very happy with it.
Check Olli´s work also from Instragram.
