strangers & lessons in photography.

I had literally just gotten back into Oakland from my 2.5-day drive from Denver when I was approached by a woman outside of A Cuppa' Tea. She asked if she could take my photo for a project she was doing called the Stranger Project, wherein every day she asks one stranger if she can take their photo. Her premise:

"I started this project primarily because approaching people and asking if I can make a photo of them is hard for me to do and it’ll become very easy once I’ve done it 365 times. I also started it because I want to improve my portrait photography skills, and my photography skills in general– the main incentive, in my opinion, for undertaking a 365 photos project.

The idea of doing a 365 featuring photos of myself seemed exceedingly boring not to mention narcissistic. And the idea of having to come up with a subject to photograph every single day seemed even more daunting than approaching a stranger every day and asking the soon-to-be un-dreaded question."

She introduced herself as Jen, and after she took my photo, I asked to take hers.

Then she handed me a little card that said strangerproject.org on it. She said that she hasn't been publicizing the site or the project at all outside of handing a card to each stranger that she photographs every day, but she's been finding that word has gotten around because her photo subjects will post the photo of themselves to their Facebook pages.

We talked for a while about undertaking photo projects "just because." Not because we're professionals, or because we aim to do anything specific with the photos that we take, but just for the love of taking photos and wanting to get better at it.

She was the perfect stranger to have a conversation with after my revelatory photo-taking experience in Colorado.

(One) lesson learned: Facebook = good viral publicity.

--------

Shortly after I got back, I also emailed a friend of mine who is running for Oakland City Council and asked if she wanted a photographer for her first campaign fundraising event. She said hell yeah, so I went and took photos for three hours. She had another photographer named Frederic there who had a 5D Mach II and a whole camera setup that far outstripped mine. He, like me, was using a 17-40 lens (whose quality, he said, was totally comparable to the 16-35, but he had a flash system that made it possible for him to take really sharp photos in low light). He also had a 50/1.4 lens to take close-up portraits, and one of those single-legged tripods for steadying his camera. I just had my 17-40 lens and therefore needed to use whatever natural light I could find. I feel kinda wary of relying on flash, but especially for a 'professional' gig, it was hard for me to not feel as though I was missing something- not just in terms of equipment but also knowledge base.

I think I got some pretty decent photos from the night, and felt pretty happy about kicking off a potential ongoing portfolio-building gig; I also learned a lot about what I still need to learn, which is maybe the greatest novel experience I have been having consistently lately (novel in that I feel it without shame, only determination and interest).

Then, the other morning, I was playing around with different settings on my camera and hit a very dangerous feature called "CF Format." And my camera, without any further confirmation, drew itself upright, did a military salute, and formatted my CF card for me by erasing everything on it.

Lesson learned: Upload photos- especially important ones- right away, and then maybe even back them up if you feel ambitious. Do not count on keeping them safe on your CF card until you get around to uploading them in, like, a week. Because what will happen is that you will accidentally erase all of them while zealously pressing buttons, or drop your camera into a lake filled with alligators, or a very agile velociraptor will remove your memory card from your camera and eat it, and then you will have to tell your friend/client that you have no photos for them because _____ happened and they were totally right to have more than one photographer present at their event and maybe you can try again next time and actually have something to show for three hours of taking photos?