L Is For The Way You Look At Me

I think that one of the reasons that I most enjoy portrait photography, and find it to be a challenging and enjoyable experience, is because I tend to fall in love with my subjects a little bit. The choosing of a person to photograph may seem like an arbitrary process, but there is a significance to the people who catch one's eye. I have, however, been interested in attempting to flaunt this bias - for quite a while, I have considered buying a poster board and markers, writing "Give 5 mins, make a student photographer happy!" and standing on a corner somewhere, working with whoever ends up volunteering. I've actually already bought the materials, now I just need to get around to doing it...the trick is, I can't let the photographs become banal just because they are voluntary. This may not be an effective method, but I would like to try it out nonetheless.

I met this woman in Little Italy, the neighborhood that is basically populated solely by tourists. I was attracted by her bright clothing, distinctive face, and brazen manner of smoking in the middle of the street, disdainful of the crowds around her. It turned out that she was from Slovenia, and actually spoke a bit of Russian; I don't think that we discussed anything of importance, but I really enjoyed her confident, frank manner.

"Can I smoke?" she asked me as I framed the photo.
"Of course," I replied.
"Good," she said with a sniff of derision, "because people in this country always seem to disapprove of it."

As my mother is part of the elite, ostracized group that is smokers in the United States, I understood this sentiment perfectly.