The Art of Street Photography Without Streets

Chasing beauty in the middle of the Baltic Sea

The view from a table in the dining area of the ferry. All photos by William Sidnam.

Can you do street photography if the nearest street is a speck in the distance?

It’s a question I’m wondering while looking through some photos I took last week. I was on a ferry on the Gulf of Finland, heading from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia.

Travelling solo and having nothing better to do, I had an idea: why not spend the journey taking photos? It was golden hour, after all, and a glorious sunset was on the horizon. Conditions were pretty much perfect. Given my urge to chase beauty with my camera, it was nigh-on impossible, then, to keep the little black box tucked away.

I was on the top deck, but there was hardly a soul in sight. I suppose the wind kept people below deck, encased in the entertainment wings of this floating mall. But still, it seemed insane that people would rather bury their heads in the neon glow of slot machines than take in the view out the window. I could never understand the mentality of such people; it just seemed such a wasted opportunity.

Taking photos of strangers on a ferry is a lot like taking photos of strangers in the street: you try to capture candid moments that tell a story. The only difference, of course, is that in the place of cars and roads, there…