Strangers

On Sunday, I walked around Claremont Village area looking for a new photo opportunity.  I passed a couple of guys who appeared to have just started singing for their supper.  Just as I passed them I bumped into a fellow teacher from my school.  He was in the Village with his mom and brother shopping and I ended up talking with them for about 15 minutes or so.

My friend asked me whether I was out shooting photos for my 365 project and I told him yes, but I wasn't sure what I was going to take yet as nothing had really struck me as photo worthy, although I kept hearing these two guys behind me and I thought I might at least get some street photography shots out of it.

I took my leave of them and continued my walk, getting some still life shots of a couple of interesting things I saw. When you walk in alleys, you sometimes get all sorts of things you wouldn't normally see just walking on the sidewalks.  By the time I worked my way back around to where these two guys were, I had decided that I was going to introduce myself to them and ask them to be part of my 100 Strangers project.

Both were cool with being part of the project, but neither was very talkative since they were really into their music.  The guy playing the guitar was Ken and the guy in the wheelchair was David.  Ken was a little more hesitant about having his photo shot, saying as I was taking a couple of shots that I wouldn't get anything good because "I'm not photogenic."  In a way, he was right as the photo above was the only shot I got where he had his eyes open, but I feel like I caught his personality with the shot.  I really like that he was not looking at me, but at David as if getting ready to lead David into a harmony, or perhaps to get him to play harmonica.

David was singing harmonies with Ken, but also played the harmonica.  He was non-stop talk, but not really talking about much of anything outside of the music.  I listened to them for a little bit, dropped a couple of bucks into the guitar case and moved on.  I think the only thing that I'm really disappointed about with this shot is you can't really see the cigarette smoke.  It's more pronounced in the original photo, but the smoke seems to have been wiped away when I processed it to black & white.  I need to work on this.

So my worries of not getting another stranger photo were for naught.  I wasn't worried, but this definitely was the longest dry spell for me with the 100 Strangers project.  In a couple of weeks, I'll be heading up to the bay area and San Francisco.  Who knows what or who I'll encounter when I'm up there.