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Ten Strangers

Tanya
Oct 25, 2010
2 min read

Week two (7/15) of my first semester of PH 108: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY with John Trefethen

Your task for this assignment is to shoot pictures of ten people who are strangers to you.

This assignment is designed to get you shooting and posting several images to the Class Discussion. For some this will be easy, and for others this will be painful. In either case, there is a lot to be gained from the dynamics of shooting people you do not know.

If someone does not want his or her picture taken, no problem, don't force the issue or make someone uncomfortable for this assignment. Beyond trying to achieve a good photograph, keep your images sharp and practice getting good exposures. Many of the photographic fundamentals we discuss in this class will seem to go out the window when you are faced with shooting a stranger. Keep that in mind. That is the main learning objective for this assignment.

I will say this was a challenge for me, but here we go.

I went to a charity fundraiser Halloween event and captured a few of these photos.

A portrait is described as an image that reveals something about the subject (person in the picture), as well as something about the photographer. This is a communication issue as much as it is a photographic issue. Please discuss your experience in making these photographs for this assignment. Speak about how easy or difficult it was for you to point your camera at a stranger and take their picture.

Since you have ten images to make, how many different approaches did you try, and which seemed to feel and/or work the best for you? The criteria being:

Is it a good portrait?
Does it tell us something about the subject and the photographer?
Did you "sneak up" on your subject or shoot from a distance?
Did you ask for permission to shoot the photo?
Did you engage your subject in conversation before or during taking their picture?

I am an introvert, and I have to take medication to be in a public situation. When you couple that with the fact it is becoming hibernating season where I live, this was not an easy assignment for me. My method of choice would be the “sneaky” approach. That is not easy when shooting in manual, in P mode maybe, but not full manual. Five of my images posted were taken by the sneaky approach. The remaining shots were in “plain sight” method. I think the in plain sight method worked best. I didn’t really ask permission for most of the photos but I don’t think anyone really minded or knew that the image was taken. I had tons of volunteers (in costume) while at the Halloween event I attended.