Via Flickr:
Earlier today I decided that my next stranger absolutely had to be an attractive girl but I bombed out – my detour back to work had produced nobody and I found myself in my local sandwich shop 100 yards from work discussing football with the owner as normal …
… and then Becca walked in. Now, with no offence to the local clientele, it is not every day that someone as beautiful as Becca walks into Tony & Frankie’s and I’m pretty sure that Tony will back me up on this tomorrow. I immediately knew that I was not going to pass up on this opportunity but I waited until I was ready to go before I asked her – it is always in my mind that rejections could be awkward for both parties (although this has never proved the case so far) so I wanted to make sure that I could say “thanks anyway, have a good day” and then leave.
Rejection proved to be an unfounded concern though as she was more than happy to take part – the only issue being her car which was illegally parked and she wanted to be able to keep an eye on it. At first I misunderstood and thought she was concerned about time and wanted me to take the photo there and then in the sandwich shop but this was not the case, she just wanted to be able to see her car so we went outside once she was ready and I used a nearby roller shutter as the backdrop (thanks to the McConnochies of the world for the inspiration).
The photo itself I am really pleased with but there was a large amount of bumbling in this encounter – I had a jacket with me which I wasn’t wearing and I dropped it at least twice (Becca offered to hold it for me which was sweet) but moreover my camera stopped working properly and I couldn’t change the focus point which was fixed centrally and useless for a portrait. This turned out to be operator stupidity beyond belief[1] but it had a fortuitous side effect as it led me to manually focus some of the shots and although not the ones that I ultimately used I am quite pleased with them as well.
Between my various apologies for the technical (ahem) issues I managed to glean that Becca is a medical rep specialising in the diabetes field and that she travels “all over”; she has a boyfriend and that’s about all I gathered. Becca was really nice and very easy to talk to and I wish that this encounter had gone a bit more smoothly but all the faffing and distractions were entirely my own doing.
Becca thank you very much for taking part in my project – it was desperately in need of an “attractiveness” boost and you definitely helped with that. I hope you like the images.
[1] For those that haven’t guessed I simply managed to lock the focus point on my camera – a feature I am fully aware of and used to use quite often but never use any more. My belief that it was the camera is not without foundation though as I have previously had auto focusing problems due to bad contact between the lens and camera.
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This picture is #30 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
99% Digital 