Getting Personal in Street Photography

Most people, when travelling, also take photos that would qualify as street photography.

It is easy; when travelling, one spent quite a large portion of the travels walking around to familiarise oneself with the surroundings and its people, so it just makes sense to take photos while walking around. In fact, I am very often a judge in photography competitions, and in the street photography genre, it is noticeable that the majority of the entries in a typical South African competition, were taken abroad.

This is also true for myself, although I do make an effort to also photograph my home country's people!

But I normally find it very difficult to just take a photo, I like to know a little bit more about the people I photograph. I find myself very often walking up to the person and start a conversation.

The photo above is such a case.

The one afternoon, while we were visiting Shang Gong Shan, I decided to take a walk out of the village to scout for some landscape opportunities. Just on the outskirts of the village, on the side of one of the mountains, I saw this chicken farmer sitting amongst his chickens.

I took a photo, walked a little bit closer and took the second photo. He was still unaware of me.

I then decided to walk up to his house to greet him. We did not understand each other very well, but I did managed to find out that he is already 86 years old. His son is one of the hotel owners of a nearby village, and his son is also a photographer, organising photographic outings for the tourists. He walked into his house and told me to follow him. He searched for something next to his bed and eventually found a small tin, opened it and hand me over one of his son's business cards.

He is just a proud dad busy marketing his son's skills to a tourist!

After our discussion which was mostly converse using some sort of sign language, I asked him to take his portrait. He agreed and posed for me in the door.

Click on the image to view larger version

For me, this portrait photo is the one I cherish the most.

This is my (almost) weekly #streetphotography entry.

Hope you enjoy it.