Paco_X
Stranger 148 : Cortney
“Do you know how to work that thing?”
That is how I opened my conversation with the girl holding the hula hoop. It was a far cry from my usual introduction so I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Fortunately my question was answered with a smile, and so began my encounter with my 148th stranger, Cortney.
“Not really…I’m kind-of just learning” was her laughing reply.
I didn’t buy into her total novice claim, and after a little persuasion Cortney agreed to the portrait. However, my challenges had only just begun. We were standing in the middle of a bustling street fair, and in the moment or two I had to survey my surrounding, I did not see any clean backdrops in the immediate area. I simply decided to drop down low and shoot upward in order to capture mostly sky while maintaining a little bit of the festival atmosphere in the lower perimeter.
My second challenge was determining how to photographer her. I was a little bit out of my element in that I anticipated this would be more of an action shot. I decided I would go with a wide angle shot and get right up close to the action (I was essentially within arm’s length of Cortney). I got my ultra wide angle lens attached and then told Cortney to go for it. That’s when she threw me a curve.
I was fully expecting her to twirl the hoop around her waist in the traditional hula sense, so I was surprised when instead she started spinning the hoop vertically around her hand. I have seen shots like this in the past, and it was certainly not my intention to recreate those shots. That said, this was the pose she was offering me so I went with it. In fact I was actually quite impressed with her talent in that she wasn’t just twirling it around her wrist (like I would have), but instead she got the hoop to spin in place (like it had an invisible axel) while using her fingers simply for support. Frankly I am not sure how she accomplished this. ‘Kind-of learning’….yeah, right.
Check out the rest of the stranger street portraits in my project at Paco's 100 Strangers Project and find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.
Stranger 148 : Cortney
“Do you know how to work that thing?”
That is how I opened my conversation with the girl holding the hula hoop. It was a far cry from my usual introduction so I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Fortunately my question was answered with a smile, and so began my encounter with my 148th stranger, Cortney.
“Not really…I’m kind-of just learning” was her laughing reply.
I didn’t buy into her total novice claim, and after a little persuasion Cortney agreed to the portrait. However, my challenges had only just begun. We were standing in the middle of a bustling street fair, and in the moment or two I had to survey my surrounding, I did not see any clean backdrops in the immediate area. I simply decided to drop down low and shoot upward in order to capture mostly sky while maintaining a little bit of the festival atmosphere in the lower perimeter.
My second challenge was determining how to photographer her. I was a little bit out of my element in that I anticipated this would be more of an action shot. I decided I would go with a wide angle shot and get right up close to the action (I was essentially within arm’s length of Cortney). I got my ultra wide angle lens attached and then told Cortney to go for it. That’s when she threw me a curve.
I was fully expecting her to twirl the hoop around her waist in the traditional hula sense, so I was surprised when instead she started spinning the hoop vertically around her hand. I have seen shots like this in the past, and it was certainly not my intention to recreate those shots. That said, this was the pose she was offering me so I went with it. In fact I was actually quite impressed with her talent in that she wasn’t just twirling it around her wrist (like I would have), but instead she got the hoop to spin in place (like it had an invisible axel) while using her fingers simply for support. Frankly I am not sure how she accomplished this. ‘Kind-of learning’….yeah, right.
Check out the rest of the stranger street portraits in my project at Paco's 100 Strangers Project and find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.