Journey with Myself: Brief Encounters

As I travelled round South America, I was constantly surprised that people were willing to have their portrait taken by a complete stranger. As a ‘guesstimate’, I would say that over 90% agreed. Interestingly, I took less portraits as the journey went on, just because I increasingly felt that I was somehow imposing on their generosity. And I definitely don’t feel comfortable taking candid shots of unsuspecting folk. It’s a personal thing and I think I will have to work on getting more comfortable approaching fellow humans because I like how the images turned out. Possibly, if I were able to incorporate a bit more background info to the individual, then I would feel like there was more of a reason for my imposition. A standard to aim for would be the extraordinary body of work put together by photographer Brandon Stanton for his Humans of New York photoblog.