When you talk with Hillary Greene-Pae, you get the sense that she sees the world a little more deeply than most people. Maybe it’s her decades of experience as a clinical social worker, where understanding people in context was central to her work. Or maybe it’s her natural curiosity, the kind that leads her to strike up conversations with strangers in a flower market or crouch low in the street to catch a fleeting gesture of connection. Whatever it is, Hillary’s photography feels alive with empathy.
Bob and I first came across her work when she submitted two images to Street Photography Magazine. They were both strong, emotionally charged, beautifully composed, and difficult to choose between. Curious to see more, Bob looked at her website and immediately knew we had to talk to her.
Hillary’s introduction to photography goes back to graduate school. “It started with taking portraits for people,” she told us. “Then it turned into a grant. Polaroid gave me a grant to photograph the elderly as a way of boosting self-esteem, and to give them meaning.” That project set the tone for everything that came later, a deep interest in human stories and how images can shape the way people see themselves.
Over the years, Hillary’s camera has traveled with her across the world. Yet whether she’s photographing a stranger on a bus in Japan or a father and son playing music on a Southern street corner, her focus is consistent: she’s looking for what connects people.
“I suppose it’s being a therapist,” she said. “You take people in context. It’s all about their culture, their relationships within a family structure. So I’m always looking for that when I see people — what are they sharing, telling me? I’m always trying to take it from their perspective.”
That instinct for context shows up in her compositions. Even in her most spontaneous street photos, the background never feels accidental. Every frame seems to hold space for the story around the subject: a mural behind a passerby, a glimpse of home behind a face. Bob put it perfectly during our chat, her photos show people within their world, not isolated from it.
Hillary laughed when we pointed that out. “It’s always about telling a story,” she said, recalling advice from her son’s music mentor, the legendary guitarist Pepe Romero. “He told him, ‘Just tell them a story and move their emotion.’ It’s the same for me. I want to move emotion.”
That emotional awareness often leads her to engage with her subjects, though not always. “Sometimes I’m very candid, sometimes I approach people,” she explained. “Even if I’m trying to be secretive, they always know somehow that I’m taking their picture. I prefer a lot of times the candid, but often I’ll go up and just say, ‘I’ve taken your picture. Would you like me to send it to you?’”
That mix of openness and respect is part of what makes her images feel so intimate. They never objectify. Instead, they feel like collaborations, even when the subject doesn’t realize it. Hillary is quick to share her photos with the people she meets, sending them images that sometimes give them a new way of seeing themselves. “People get so flattered,” she said. “It’s brought light to their lives to know that someone thinks they’re interesting or beautiful.”
When she describes her creative process, Hillary often slips into stories. There’s the homeless woman she met in the flower district, draped in chains, who once worked as a model. “She said it made her feel like she hadn’t lost everything about herself,” Hillary told us. “That was the story she and I communicated. I just had curiosity.” There’s the man in prison stripes she photographed in Clarksdale, whom she first complimented on his “interesting pants” before realizing they represented his prison uniform. “He told me what his crime was and that this was how he was paying repentance,” she said. “That was humbling.”
Curiosity, and humility, drive her work. She doesn’t enter a scene assuming she knows the story. She listens, visually and emotionally, until it reveals itself. That’s also what allows her to photograph such a wide range of people: “I learned early on to be comfortable in all kinds of environments,” she said, recalling her early days as a social worker in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. “It humanized people for me. Everyone has a story to tell you how they ended up here. There was just no judgment, just relating to something human inside them.”
It’s no surprise, then, that she values feedback and dialogue about her work. When she enters competitions, it’s not for the accolades. “Confidence,” she said simply. “Getting feedback about what seems to have meaning. Every judge is different. It’s a way of giving me some sense that I do have some talent and allows me to push forward.”
That curiosity extends to technique as well. Hillary experiments constantly — shooting with different angles and focal lengths (her go-to lenses are a 24-105mm and a 35mm), getting down low or climbing high to find a new perspective. “Otherwise, it’s going to be like everybody else’s photo,” she said.
She’s also thoughtful about editing, an area where many photographers struggle. “A lot of people can learn from the way you’ve curated your own work,” Bob told her, and it’s true. Her online galleries are lean, but every image counts. “It loses its impact if you show too much,” she said. “You want them to want more.”
Late in our conversation, the topic turned to poker, another of Hillary’s passions. She plays once or twice a week, and it turns out poker has taught her plenty about street photography. “Poker is easy to learn and hard to master,” she said. “You want to pay attention to your position, to what’s happening around you. You also need to play the player.” She smiled. “And you have to learn how to lose without taking it personally.”
It’s an unexpectedly perfect metaphor for street photography: timing, awareness, intuition, and knowing when to let go.
Towards the end of our conversation with Hillary, she reflected on what photography means to her now that she’s semi-retired. “It’s documenting life,” she said. “It’s documenting how to live a life…because there’s not just one way. None of them are wrong. They’re just different.”
It’s a philosophy that radiates from her work: open-hearted, curious, and deeply human. In every frame, Hillary Greene-Pae invites us to see not just what’s in front of us, but who’s really there, and maybe, in the process, to understand a little more about ourselves.
