My Copenhagen: a photo essay of Nørreport Station

For my photojournalism course, one of our assignments was to photograph someplace in Copenhagen, while keeping in mind six types of photographs: relationships, emotions, portrait, action, eye candy, and sense of place. The difficult aspect of this assignment was that we had to go up to strangers and ask to take their picture. Because I knew this before signing up for the class, I wasn’t anxious about it when she formally assigned it in class. I was looking forward to having a reason to interact with strangers, take photos, and see the city. This attitude lasted didn’t last long. As soon as I reached a location, the fear started to set in. I walked around looking for people to photograph, but decided that none of them were interesting enough. I was too afraid of a “negative” interaction to attempt at all. I tried this twice more on Strøget the next day, but my efforts resulted in the same sense of defeat. Why was this so difficult? Why couldn’t I just go up to someone, compliment them, and ask for a picture?

Then one day I was in a field study and a person with really cool style and green hair was walking towards our class. I wanted to take their picture so badly, but the fear of rejection was setting in. A bunch of students from our class came over and everyone agreed that someone needed to do it. I started to imagine how I’d feel if I gave up the photograph. If someone else got to talk to them. If I kept letting the fear of people saying no deter me from pursuing my art. My partner gave me a slight push and then I was in front of the green-haired stranger.

When I asked for a photograph, they seemed excited. We talked about photography and their mom being a photographer, and why the art form is so cool (spoiler: it’s because you get to have interactions with new people like that). After I did it, I felt elated and excited about the many photographic opportunities in the city. I went straight to Nørreport to complete my assignment. Though I got a few “no’s,” I finished my assignment and this is what I came up with.