while walking past him, the urge to take a shot of him was kinda overwhelming. i asked ricky to wait a while, hand gesturing i’m going to take a photo and i turned back to this indian man.

thoughts of ‘eh, sure ah? what if he just ignore you?’ – fuck la, worst thing this man could do is to say NO, i assured myself.

i went up to him, asked if i could take a photo of him, he asked why, i told a white lie (‘i bought this toy film camera and i am soooo excited to try it out, can you please help me?’) and he obliged.

based on my experience, the average attention span given to a photographer to shoot a human subject is less than 3 minutes.

i previsualised what i wanted before i asked for permission, took my shot and thanked him. all done within a minute. seemed like forever.

the feeling of accomplishment i felt  is more or less like how one felt when they completed their final exams. lol. fun.

i am going to start posting my series of random strangers which i started shooting a few months ago.

the main intent for this photoseries was to overcome my personal fear of asking a stranger for permission to take a photograph of him / her.

i felt its ironic to have such fear since i am a portraiture photographer. in reality, portraiture photographer or not, it does not mean jack shit. the thing is, 90% of the time in all cases, people come to me, i don’t approach individuals unless the need to.

to make things a little more challenging, i observed a few things as below -

a. random strangers – individuals i have not shoot before and/or i randomly meet everywhere.

b. only with film cameras – film is punishing, time consuming and can be quite expensive.

c. 1 shot within a 5min timeframe or less. excluding time for asking (coaxing)

d. not to care about aesthetics – anything goes.