I am not a street photographer

Monday 9 March 2026, 15:51 by Michiel Heijmans | 1,269 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Everyone wants to know what kind of photographer you are. It is usually the first thing someone asks when you say you take photographs. Landscape or portrait? Nature or street? And when you answer "both", or worse, all three, you can see the other person becoming uncomfortable. As if you are afraid to choose. As if you have not found yourself yet.

I understand that feeling. But I think putting things into boxes gets in our way.

The conversation at the camera club

Imagine this: you are at a camera club. Someone shows beautiful landscape photographs taken in Iceland. Dramatic skies, long exposures, that sort of thing. Afterwards, the same person says that they also sometimes do portrait photography. People immediately look surprised. That does not fit, does it? You are a landscape photographer. You should stick to that.

Or take the online version. A photographer with an Instagram account full of black-and-white street photography posts a colourful close-up of a flower. The reactions are predictable. "This does not fit your feed." "I follow you for your street photography." As if that account were a product that had to follow fixed rules.

We are getting used to photographers labelling themselves. And that label appears early on. As soon as you are a little beyond being a beginner, people ask what your "specialisation" is. As if you only count as serious once you have locked yourself in a box.

Too many types of photography, but what does that say?

I know photographers who say they do everything. Macro, weddings, events, landscapes, sport, wildlife, and product photography on the side. The first question I ask myself is not "how do you do all that?" but: what do I see when I look at your work? What of you is in all those photographs?

Because that is exactly the point. It is not about how many genres you photograph. It is about whether there is a personal vision running through all that work.

A photographer who makes both landscapes and portraits can easily have one recognisable style. Perhaps all the photographs are very calm, almost meditative. Perhaps there is always a lot of sky in the image, or that photographer is always looking for some form of loneliness. Then it does not matter whether they are standing on a mountain top or in a studio: that way of seeing belongs to them.

But a photographer who jumps from one shoot to the next without putting anything of themselves into it is not versatile. They are directionless.

My own confusion

I have called myself a street photographer for years. Or at least, that is how people see me, and that is how I introduce myself too. I give workshops on street photography, I have written books about it, and I speak about the subject at camera clubs. Street photography is my thing.

But in the meantime, I also make portraits. Very different portraits from what you usually see, no studio work, no tightly lit headshots, but sessions where I first sit and talk to someone for an hour before picking up the camera. I call that pauze. A portrait as a summary of a conversation.

And when I am sitting in one of those sessions, I notice that I do exactly the same thing as I do on the street. I wait for the real moment. I do not ask people to pose. I watch until someone forgets themselves. I treat the camera almost as an afterthought. I did not learn that from a book or a course. That is how I see. That is me.

So what am I then? A street photographer or a portrait photographer?

I think the answer is: neither, or both, or it does not really matter. What I am is someone who looks for the real moment. Who waits until the pose disappears and the person remains. I do that on the street, I do it in a portrait, and I actually do it when I am giving a workshop and someone is walking alongside me taking photographs. Then I am not looking at the technique, I am looking for the moment when someone sees something and forgets that I am there.

The common thread you may not see yet

Many photographers think they make very diverse work, but when you take a step back, you almost always see a connection. That connection is not in the subject, but in the way someone looks.

I know a photographer who does nature, macro and street photography. Three completely different genres. But anyone who sees his work immediately notices that he is always looking for details that people overlook. A flower up close, the texture of a pavement, the face of an old man while everyone else carries on walking. The way of seeing is the same every time.

Or take a photographer who makes architectural, portrait and abstract photographs. It sounds like three separate things. But in all her work, she looks for geometry, for lines and planes. A portrait where the shadow creates a sharp pattern on the wall. An architectural photograph where a passer-by is standing exactly in the right place. She is always looking for the same thing, even though we keep calling it something different.

You probably have a common thread like that too. Perhaps you always photograph in black and white, not because it is compulsory, but because colour distracts you from what you want to show. Perhaps you are always looking for playfulness, for a laugh or a strange situation. Perhaps you are always looking for calm and silence, even in the middle of a busy city. Or for chaos and movement, even when you are in an otherwise very calm environment.

That pattern is your style. Not your genre. Your style.

The label gets in the way

The problem with a label is that it creates expectations. For you, and for others.

As soon as you call yourself a "landscape photographer", you feel the implicit pressure to only make landscapes. Your Instagram account becomes a showcase of mountain tops and sunsets. And when you make a portrait one day that you are proud of, you wonder whether you should post it. Does it fit? Will people understand it? Will people get confused?

And that is a shame. Because you have made something you like, and you put it away in a drawer because it falls outside your box.

I have participants in my workshops who say: "I mainly do landscape photography, really, but I also want to learn how to photograph people." As if those were two separate worlds. As if you needed a passport to travel from one to the other.

And sometimes I ask the question slightly differently: what is landscape photography, really? You are outside, you have a camera, you look. The moment a cyclist rides through your frame, is it suddenly no longer landscape photography? And if you make a close-up of a stone in that landscape, is it macro? And if that stone is interesting enough to hang on the wall, is it fine art?

Labels say more about how we organise things than about how photography really works.

Maybe you are something completely different

Here is a thought I have been carrying around for a while, and that I also regularly bring up during talks: perhaps you are not a street photographer or a landscape photographer at all. Perhaps that label does not describe what you really do.

Perhaps you are an analogue photographer. Not because you happen to shoot film, but because analogue photography suits you. The slowness, the feeling of not knowing what will come out, the grain, the limitations. That is not your technique. That is your way of thinking.

Perhaps you are a quiet photographer. Someone who is always looking for the pause in the image, for the moment just before or just after the action. Whether you are photographing a wedding, a landscape or a portrait, you are always waiting for the silence.

Perhaps you are a dramatic photographer. Everything you make has something theatrical about it. Hard contrasts, deep shadows, big gestures. It is in your blood, whether you are in the studio or outside on the street.

Perhaps you are a documentary photographer. Not in the classic journalistic sense, but someone who always records, who captures reality without making it more beautiful than it is. That fits in a portrait, a landscape or a reportage. The approach is always the same.

If you forget the genres for a moment and simply look at what drives you when you hold a camera, what is it?

What this means in practice

I do not think you need to overhaul your website or delete your Instagram feed now. But I do think it is worth taking an honest look at your own work.

Pick twenty photographs that you really like. From different periods, and from different genres if you do more than one. Put them next to each other. Not to see how technically good they are, but to see what they have in common. What are you looking for? What keeps appearing? What makes a photograph unmistakably yours?

That is a more interesting question than whether you are allowed to call yourself a street photographer or a landscape photographer.

And if you cannot work it out, or if you find these kinds of questions interesting, that is exactly the sort of conversation I have during my PAUZE sessions. Not just for portrait photography, but also for anyone who wants to think about where they stand as a photographer. And during my street photography workshops, the conversation regularly goes in that direction too. Street photography is the starting point, but the questions that arise are always more personal than that.

The question that remains

Imagine that your bio simply said: "I photograph what moves me." No genre, no specialisation. Just that.

I like that. It is also a little easy, because it does not say much about what your photographs look like. But I understand the attitude behind it. Whoever writes that has decided that the label does not help them.

Sometimes I ask that question to participants in my workshops: how would you describe yourself as a photographer if you put the usual terms aside for a moment? Landscape, street, portrait, forget those for now. What do you really do?

The answers surprise me every time. And they are always much more personal and interesting than "I am a street photographer."

So. How would you describe yourself?

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