Your Soul is Mine

Work has been pretty slow lately. My days at work consist of staring at an email inbox containing nothing related to work and studying texts books I drooled on in college. Nothing exciting. Time slows down. Life passes by.

I had to get out of the office so I decided to leave early today; many already had a head start on me. I like to mix it up and lately I've been trying my hand at street photography, so that became my afternoon activity once I escaped the life sucking abyss of my cubicle.

I have to admit, street photography is hard. I think I suck at it, there are many others who do a way better job. I've tried this a few times before and this is the first time I really made an effort at shooting people's faces. Usually it's the back of their head or someone going by on a bicycle.

But I busted out the ninja skills and actually really got into it and started to have fun. It became my mission to track down interesting looking subjects and I got kind of a rush from doing something completely outside my comfort zone. It's kind of like the feeling you get from approaching a pretty girl, you're nervous and you think of all the ways things can go wrong.

I did however have my 85mm lens, which allowed me to keep a little more distance away from the subjects to make things a little easier, less intrusive and hopefully keep me unnoticed. The photos can lose value if the person becomes aware of what you're doing. The thing I like about street photography is that you are capturing moments in people's life when they aren't expecting their photo to be taken and you kind of get an insight into their world, every photo tells a story.

Everyone has things going on in their own life and we rarely care about what's going on in a stranger's life. We focus in on ourselves, our family and friends; people of which who typically share common interests and social class. We complain about things a stranger would find a luxury. We laugh at things a stranger would find sad. We throw away things a stranger would find useful. We neglect opportunities a stranger would never get. We get frustrated with our jobs a stranger would love to have.

But think about this: We are all strangers to someone.