Stranger #19: CUTE RECEPTIONIST
It's been quite a while since I've shot my last stranger.
It's for a number of different reason why my stranger hunt is in hiatus.
I guess a big part of it was because i remember one afternoon when i got turned down, not only once, or twice, but three times! My confidence was shot down and the project came down with it, lol
Another reason was the change of season. I normally would go and hangout at a coffee shop afterwork, and there would be plenty of daylight left after 5pm, making the light situation ideal to be shooting portraits outside, which was kind of my tried and tested formula in shooting my strangers, to get that really good exposure in their faces. But that was last summer. The season have since changed and sunset is normally around 430pm nowadays.
Next was my wanting to change the style in the way i compose my shots. Somehow i want to take a shoulder and head profile shot instead of a close tight cropped headshot that i normally do. This type of composition captures really nice and interesting backgrounds to go along with the strangers' portrait. Checkout Andrew and Markus' work here on Flickr. These guys are nothing short of phenomenal with their street portraits, and I wanted to kinda adapt their shooting style but i wanted to practice it and be good at it first before i start asking somebody for their portrait.
So these reasons and a few small other ones kinda are what's holding me back from moving forward with this project.
Stranger #19 somehow temporarily broke me out of my hibernation for 3 reasons.
1.) I wanted to test out Greg's 135mm F/2.0L lens, shots of which you'll see on the left.
2.) I have recently just got my 35mm F/1.4L lens, and wanted to see how it performs in lowlight.
These shots were taken at extremely low light situations, 6400 ISO, F/2.0. Both lens performed quite well and ofcourse my 7D (yep, my CANON camera :p) handled the noise really well. The light was still very bad however and so the sharpness of my shots leaves much to be desired =(
I wanted to just throw these shots away. They've been sitting in my computer too long that i, shamefully, forgot who my subject was or what her name was =(
What's the 3rd reason, you ask? Because 3.) she was cute XD
Cute Receptionist works at a bar and restaurant downtown where we had our photogroup's monthly meeting more than 3 months ago.
I remember asking her if i can take her photo. She refused at first saying she does not look good in pictures. I had to disagree and told her that she was one of the better looking ones i've met so far. And so she let me took a couple of shots before telling me that she needs to get back to work.
Cute Receptionist is my 19th stranger for the 100 Strangers Project.
See the rest of my "strangers" here.
See the 100 Strangers Group here on Flickr
Or checkout: www.100strangers.com