What I've learned from doing Portraits of Strangers | Washington DC, Street Photography
After months of quarantine, don’t you miss people watching (in the noncreepy way of course)? My longing to be surrounded by people, seeing them interact, & seeing people out and about has created in me a deep desire to capture spur of the moment portraits of strangers.
Knowing that we’ve all been locked in our homes for months at a time, it’s not hard to notice the extra glimmer of contentment & joy in people’s eyes just because they are out of their homes. Over the past few weeks, I’ve challenged myself to do the “portraits of strangers” challenge that I’ve seen floating around Tiktok.
This challenge has taught me so many things in such a short amount of time.
Here’s a shortlist of some of the lessons I’ve learned from doing portraits of strangers.
1. Capturing other people’s joy truly brings me so much joy. Even in a 1-minute session of strangers.
2. Challenging myself to capture portraits in only 1 minute has helped fine-tune my posing skills.
3. I’m re-learning to look up and truly see people, I’m re-learning to notice that they are there. Before COVID I could easily walk through a park and never look up to see the countless faces around me. Quarantine has taught me that it’s a sweet & simple blessing to hear the sound of people gathered, seeing people gathered, & seeing smiling faces at all. I’ll never take being around people for granted ever again.
4. Kindness costs nothing to give & the sweetness of making a stranger’s day is a gift in itself.
5. Just like math drills in a math class, these portraits of strangers sessions have helped me practice all of my photography skills after months of being out of practice.
6. Talking to strangers is always scary, but most people are kinder than you think.
7. Never forget that there are beautiful smiles hiding behind those masks.
8. Asking strangers if you can take their portraits is a great way to practice meeting new people. How many times do strangers ask if YOU can take their photo for them? Essentially it’s the same thing.
9. People are beautiful just as they are. Every photoshoot & wedding day I capture everyone around knows ahead of time that a professional photographer will be around taking photos. In these stranger sessions no one knows ahead of time that I’ll be capturing their portraits that day and yet each stranger I’ve captured has been so beautiful, photogenic, & confident.
10. Photography is powerful. It connects people & it celebrates moments both big and small. The small moments are beautiful too.
Huge thanks to Mili (& her man), Kaylynne, Marcha & Olivia for being so cool about a complete stranger taking their portraits & for giving up 1 minute of their time to allow me to capture their beautiful smiles!
