Spontaneous Portraits

A few things about these portraits:

If you are looking through these portraits and I do use the term portrait rather loosely here please keep the following in mind.

These portraits are spontaneous. There is no elaborate lighting set up. No time for make up or hair or change of wardrobes. These are candid portraits snapped of people who are kind enough and brave enough to let me take a photo of them just as they are, where they are and I am so very grateful to them for that.

In undertaking this project I was struck after these first few photographs at how unprepared I was for establishing contact with other people that I barely or simply didn't know at all, and asking for something quite personal from them. I hope that this project changes some of that.

Working from home and being more than occupied in my capacity as business partner and Mum I can sometimes go a couple of days if not an entire week without having a meaningful conversation with another adult outside of my family or close friends - actually the more I think about it, a meaningful conversation could be far rarer than that depending on what precludes a "meaningful" conversation. I don't even have facebook and am quite a happy hermit so I see now that I may have literally lost the art,  the knack, of conversation with other people that fall outside of my normal day to day circulation.

Approaching strangers or those that you barely know and asking them if you can take their photos is a daunting prospect. It takes courage both to make the request and also to agree to it. Knowing myself pretty well,  I have ensured that these approaches are spontaneous - not even I know when or who I am going to ask during my day although I always have my cameras on me now. The reason for this, is if I had time to think about it then I would think myself clean out of the situation regardless of the fact that I am determined to succeed in my quest of 100 days 100 people. Failure is not an option so neither is over thinking or planning.

What I have found, even this early in the project is how much I am enjoying the process.