While I love photography - and it's becoming a much greater creative pastime for me lately (basically I do my day job so I can afford to travel and take photos in the time I'm not working) - the one area I have never been very comfortable with is taking people shots - portraits, candid or otherwise. I might see something that 'would make a great shot' but a lot of times I worry that I'm exploiting someone's situation by taking the photo or that they'll catch me doing it and feel self-conscious or irritated. Heck, even if someone specifically wants me to take a few portrait/family/group shots - such as Lorne's sister, Kris, asked a couple of years ago when they visited us in Vancouver - I feel so horribly put on the spot and pressured to deliver great pictures, that I actually become incredibly flustered in that situation. Give me animals, insects, scenery, buildings, patterns or even curious signs and I'm perfectly fine. Put me around people and it's an entirely different story - I get nervous, self-conscious and so ridiculously awkward it's actually quite debilitating from a photography standpoint. I even purposefully signed up for a couple of portraiture photography courses a few years ago to push myself into confronting - and hopefully overcoming - this bizarre timidity and apparently, from those who've witnessed it, I thankfully don't come across as 'awkward' as I might feel on the inside, but suffice to say, I will
never be a wedding photographer. In fact the whole idea reminds me of learning to scuba dive many years ago. I was working in the incredibly gorgeous and aquatic paradise of the Maldive Islands for several months and, right from the get-go, the opportunity was there for me to do the PADI Open Water scuba courses
for free. Yet I held off and held off - leaving it right up until the final few weeks of my contract, before actually taking the dive school up on their offer. Again it was that sense of pushing myself to confront something that I ultimately find quite nerve-wrecking. I was afraid I'd freak out under water and suddenly shoot to the surface, giving myself the bends in the process. But I did the course and then proceeded straight after to the Advanced Open Water Diver course which even involved a night dive - the thought of which genuinely scared me, but I did it and what's more, I loved it. (It's a whole other world underwater after dark.) That said, diving certificates or not, it's still a major push for me to sign myself up for a dive. It's a great feeling to do it and it's spectacular to enjoy the whole underwater life, but scuba diving does not come easy to me and, as much as I hate to admit it given the absolutely breathtaking experience it can be, it's unlikely that diving will ever be anything more than something I might try once in a blue moon on vacation (simply because I can).
And so it is with portrait photography for me. In fact, as much as I'd love to shoot animal portraits, I wonder if I'd feel the same pressure if I was shooting by request rather than randomly capturing the images/moments as and when I see them.
Thankfully though, for once I did
not shy away from clicking the shutter when this little scene caught my eye during our last day of wandering around the magnificent city of Prague last summer. In fact I even took a couple of shots, of which this is the best - and he was kind enough to remain so concentrated on his book that he never even noticed me capture his portrait. You'd think I had purposefully asked him to pose there for me. Again, just one of those moments where planets align and I happened to have my camera at the ready.
 |
So casual and cool, this guy was simply
enjoying his book while unwittingly
presenting me with this fantastic photo opp. |
So, to this handsome fella, whoever you are, thank you so much for making my photograph one that I feel proud of - and proving that perhaps I can push myself to take portraits after all (even if the thought does still make me a little anxious).
