This guy was asking for it, literally.

The other week when I was in London I was trying to get my nerve to take shots of people. Not neccessarily people doing intresting things, but just people. It’s something I’d like to develop with all this clicking: trying to capture an expression, or a moment, nothing staged, just an instant. I guess I like those photos you see when a personality is drawn all over the subjects face in a frame. You know, those deep pictures where every line and wrinkle tell a story. Of course, I’m not anywhere near good enough to hope to capture the sort of story I feel in the kind of photos, but it’s a fun thing to keep in mind.

It also means that I sorta feel a desire to practice on people I don’t know, meaning the general public on the street. It’s weird on so many levels, because who the hell wants a camera put in their face? Who the hell even wants to feel like an absolute stranger is photographing them? Okay, maybe some people, but I guess you’ve got to be respectful of the people who don’t, and asking them about it in the first place defeats the object of capturing people unawares, so you sorta gotta assume that everybody would disapprove, just to be on the safe side. I still haven’t worked it out. Maybe I’m not aloof, or voyeristic, take your pick, enough to take photos of strangers.

Anyway, this guy jumped at the chance. I was trying something else, just standing there looking through the viewfinder turning round and scanning the crowd while my friend tried to figure out where we should go, and this guy, dressed in yellow, jumps into my frame. My first thought was ‘uh?‘, but I focussed him anyway. Then he lifted his glasses and pouted kissy-lips for me. It must have took a second. I didn’t think. I just clicked.