The Always Elusive Portrait
It's happened to us all. While wandering anywhere we can come across a face that speaks without moving the mouth. Eyes that are so deep you could swim around in them for days and never see the same thing twice. Lines that are paths to seemingly countless memories. You know that you will never fully understand a life in a portrait but you can get a glimpse if only you had the balls to invade a person's personal space and life for a few short seconds.
Sometimes it is made easy for you. People will stand at frequented tourist attractions, dress in traditional clothing and let you take their picture, for a small payment of course. But those eyes, and lines never seem to convey the same thing that the old woman's on the bus did. Sure they make a good shot to show the fam but it isn't really what you wanted and deep down you will always know that picture that mom shows off to all her friends is one big ass fake. You want that spark of reality that is never really there in those situations, plus why pay for it when you can get it for free?
Enter the 'Let's Take a Shot of the Locals Without Them Knowing it' game. With enough sneakiness, a bit of luck, and plenty of room on the old memory card this can yield a pretty good shot (usually with a bit of cropping), but usually it just leads to far away headless or feet less bodies that are off centre and usually on such a slope that without their feet it is unbelievable that they are managing to not tumble down the hill. And after awhile you just start to feel bad.
So you finally suck it up and ask. If you speak the language great. If not a show of the camera and a tilt of the head works just as well. You snap the picture and BAM great shot and one that you will be happy to have mom show off. At which point you could say thank you and walk away, but usually I find some sort of exchange always makes me feel better about the invasion. You can choose to throw them some money which is obviously best for the very poor, or you can take down a name and address and promise to send them a copy. If you do this make sure you follow through as most people will be excitedly looking forward to the day when they receive your picture of papa, mama, or little sister, in the mail.
These pictures are my attempt at these techniques. Three are my real deal and the rest are the first two tricks. I think it is pretty damn easy to figure out which ones are which.
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