Haven’t posted a street portrait in a while, which is a pity, because making portraits of strangers and interacting with them is the most fun part of Street Photography.
When shooting the Mount Hood sunset photos the other evening at Portland’s Pittock Mansion Park, a cool looking dude running around with a camera caught my eye. So I approached him and asked him if I can make his portrait, explaining I’m a visiting street photographer from Germany.
He seemed quite flattered, which did not surprise me at all. Trust me, extrovert looking/dressed people are always flattered if you ask them to take their picture. They are the easiest subjects to approach if you want to get started making portraits of total strangers.
My standard questions are always “what’s your name?” “where are you from?” and “what you are doing?”. Turns out he is Dimitri from Russia, precisely from Moscow. Which led us to the discussion if it’s worth visiting the Russian capital. He insisted that it would be a total waste of time, St. Petersburg is the destination of choice (which it is, I can confirm). He was just moving to Portland up from LA (lot’s of people seem to do that lately) together with his girlfriend who is a professional photographer.
While he detests the Hollywood industry and the superficial people it is producing, he admitted it is much more difficult to find models to work with in the Rose City.
We exchanged some travel and eating tips and them went about our ways, me having bagged myself a fun experience and some nice street portraits of a total stranger.
Today it’s travel day again, as I’m heading back to the streets of Nuremberg. As it’s the first day of Spring Break in Oregon, the airport will be super crowded, so I might need to leave 30 mins earlier to make all lines in time to take my flight across the Northern Atlantic to Amsterdam and on to Nuremberg. Left side window seat is reserved and I’m hoping to see some Northern Lights form the plane.
Photos taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the Zuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom. Postprocessing in Lightroom Classic CC
Wish you a great Thursday!
Marcus
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Instant Inspiration (8) – Make a portrait of a stranger