Now it’s time for guest blog post by Germany Street Photographer: Sebastian Jacobitz
Sebastian is a person who loves to share his experience about travel and street photography in his blog: Streetbounty.com. I do encourage you to check his blog for more useful tips and information.
Sebastian:
At the end of last year, I had the opportunity to meet the Jakarta Street Photography community and I want to share my experience with Street Photography in Jakarta.
I am Sebastian, a 29-year old Street Photographer and usually residing in Berlin. Coming from Berlin, Jakarta was a whole different playing field and the city was overwhelming and interesting at the same time. At the end of 2017, I traveled to Jakarta while being on a trip through Southeast Asia and during my more than 2 weeks stay, I met a lot of Street Photographers who were very inspirational and had a totally different approach on Street Photography than I was used to in Berlin.
First, let me describe how Street Photography is in Berlin. You may know, legislation is a bit more restrictive and Street Photography is in some gray area, which makes it kind of hard. A lot of people are very reclusive and not very open towards being photographed on the street. Whether You are more open and try to communicate with people, or You are just doing Your thing on the street is up to You. But in general, people are not that open and that leads to Street Photographers taking a more quiet approach.
In conclusion, the Street Photography community is quite small. There are only few photographers, who are following this genre and Germany, or Berlin aren’t really a good place for an easy start.
With that said, my experience in Jakarta was totally different. First, I want to share my impression of the city. Coming from Berlin, a 3 million city, I thought I would be accustomed to bigger cities. But nothing comes close to Jakarta and compared, Berlin seems like a tiny village.
When I arrived and tried Street Photography on my own, there a few obstacles to overcome. Being a pedestrian in the streets of Jakarta seems to be very complicated and although there are a few sidewalks, which is a huge improvement compared to other Indonesian cities, it still feels like a maze. Sometimes roads are just closed for no reasons, traffic lights are shut down and in general, walking is not really enjoyable in most of the city.
Seeing that everyone drives a scooter it is no surprise, that pedestrians are not a huge priority. However, there are a few interesting places and spots that are ideal for Street Photography in Jakarta.
After trying to explore the city on my own for a week, I met up with Sam Bara and Chris Tuarissa who I found via Instagram. I didn’t know, but they were already photographing regularly together. We met up to go a more “rougher” area where I wouldn’t go alone as a tourist myself. It was a busy marketplace where they were hauling lots of different goods and also doing some repair on their old trucks.
The atmosphere was pretty good, which is also attributed to Sam’s very open approach. He would talk to everyone, have a short chat and always a smile. This gave us the opportunity to be around the workers ourselves and photograph very closes. I can only emphasize, that it wouldn’t be a good idea to go there as a tourist alone and that I am very thankful to have seen these areas as well, as the more touristic places.
As a tourism hotspot and one of the best places to do some Street Photography, I would recommend the car-free day on Sunday. Very early in the morning, the cars would vanish around the city centre and make way for the small street vendors. They were selling not only food but souvenirs and pretty much anything You can imagine. I was also surprised by the number of people who spoke German very well. Given that Indonesia was a Dutch colony for a very long time, I wouldn’t have expected that German was still so widespread.
At the car-free day, we met up with all the different Street Photographers and it was very different from what I was used to in Germany. There were a lot of young people that were interested in Street Photography and trying all kinds of different photography. Some were more proficient with the flash and getting close, while others would use the sun to create very unique pictures. It was a totally different vibe and it felt so inspiring meeting all those different photographers.
Street Photography is also a lot “easier” for me. People are more welcoming to be photographed and not hostile, but friendly. I could get close, try different angles and photograph Jakarta the way I wanted. For my pictures, I used the X100F and the RicohGR, and I would regard both as great travel cameras. When it comes to traveling, I like to travel light and keep my equipment to a minimum. The inexpensive RicohGR is one of the best mirrorless cameras for less than $500 and allows me to spend more money on the travel, rather than the equipment.
Doing Street Photography and walking with Sam & Chris has taught me that Street Photography is a lot more about communication than I realized before. It does make a huge difference if You are just open and chatting with everyone while being friendly.
Granted, the same approach wouldn’t be transferable 100% the same way to Berlin, it is a good idea to have a more open mind. Even when people are hostile and not that open to photography, staying friendly and having a smile Yourself can create a totally different environment. This is a lesson that also helped me become a better photographer in Berlin.
I wished that in Germany younger people would pick-up Street Photography as well, but that is highly difficult with the current legislation. But seeing that the Street Photography community in Jakarta was rising gave me at least some hope, that this genre will be around for a long time.
Sebastian Jacobitz
For more about Sebastian work:
Thank you Sebastian for sharing with us about your experience in Jakarta city. It’s always great to know what other people (especially from overseas) think about street photography’s culture here.
Nico Harold