A visitor from Osaka. She was the very first stranger I photographed on my first outing with Emil. A lovely girl with very little English and yet very happy to pose for us. We certainly got along as soon as we started talking designers and clothes. Portobello Market is the perfect place for quirky looking characters.
Not the best photo technically but at the moment of taking it, I was more stressing about the fact that I was taking my first street portrait.
When you take a street portrait, there are a number of the usual things you need to consider: aperture, exposure, natural and strobe lighting, background, pose and obviously the overall composition. However, the major difference is that you usually only get two or three takes before the subject you photograph on the street gets impatient. I started off my photography journey with a self-portrait project meaning I had plenty of opportunities to take, review, attempt to edit, bin, re-shoot, edit, bin again, re-shoot self-portraits. Not so much on the street when photographing strangers though. I tend to keep them busy with a bit of small talk and lots of smiling and it usually pays off but all this takes practice and I still find that when I get the rush of adrenaline photographing a stranger, I still forget to stop and think before pressing the trigger or review the photo once shot. I rush, I know I rush too much.
