Street Photography During Ice Hockey World Championship in Finland

I love it when people look straight at me when I'm photographing them. Or to my camera which usually is the same thing.

With sunglasses you can't always be sure where the person is looking at, but if you're the only person in the bridge in 10 to 30 meter radius and there's nothing happening behind you or anywhere near because everyone's inside the arena or in front of a screen at home or in a pub watching the game and the person you're photographing doesn't look at where they are going, you can be pretty sure that they are looking at you.

I absolutely love it how I can make stories of the people because of their facial expressions or posture. This one is easy. This was the day when Latvians didn't do so well against Sweden. Or Finland. Not sure which day this was but nevertheless not good results for the Latvian team.

Anyway, as I wrote, you can't always be sure if the people who seem to look straight at you, are actually looking at you. Especially if they're eyes are behind sunglasses of the sun is behind me and they probably only see a silhouette in the bright light. But it's not important what is actually happening, being stared at or not, it's enough if it looks like they are aware that I'm photographing.

Again the same thing.
Nice pom poms!

I think he's coming for me.

Such determination.

Now this one! The tall hat! Definitely staring right at me.

And perhaps he too. At least I like to think so.

Now this is pure magic. What wonderful eyes and nice smile she has.

The lady in the bench. Is she looking at me?

The singer certainly did stare at me at some point, not sure if this is that exact moment but pretty close.

She sang:
"In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What's in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ie-ie oh..."

Is slightly younger Leonardo DiCaprio behind the sunglasses looking at me?

Well he's not. But so close that I had to add this photo too.

Nice catch wouldn't you say?

Now this photo. As if the dude behind the thin tree trunk isn't creepy enough because I actually have several other photos where he is the only one staring at me and not moving at all, there's at least two other people checking me out and perhaps also the pall of the creepy tree trunk dude on his right, our left side.

This gives really strong pod people vibes. And if it's not Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the some other reality where aliens are just about to start pointing at me and screaming.

I don't know what happened to the staring aliens though.

I avoided that by leaving and making weird moves when walking away that obviously distracted them enough so that they couldn't make me join their cult.

Same crowd, one person not looking at the screen.

Help!

He knows that I'm not that into ice hockey and he's about to tell that to his palls.

I don't want to be converted into hockeyism!

https://www.iihf.com/en/events/2022/wm/schedule

Then again perhaps I never got away and the ice hockey chip in my brain is slowly starting to work because I have been following the game results and if I'm walking out there and trying to pass a screen I always have to stop for a moment and actually watch the game.

I blame the Finnish team.

They've been too good.

And the Finns in Tampere streets are quite loud too.

But I don't blame them because Finns really have wiped the floor (ice) with other teams pretty nicely.

Before you know it, I'll be drinking beer with two hands in some pub, watching the games and taking of my blue and white clothes and running naked around the streets shouting HYVÄ SUOMI!
And singing:
"Den glider in
Den glider in
Den glider in
I mål igen
Vi ska kämpa
Vi ska ge
Alt det vi har
Vi ska ta
Gul igen"

There is of course one team Finns should a little bit scared of. Canada. But then again if we loose to Canada, we will definitely take comfort of the fact that we already are better than Sweden. And that we took the Olympic gold from Russia in Beijing.