Up Close and Personal

The assignment was to find thirty-six people we did not know, photograph them no less than three feet away (2/3 of them with flash), get their name, age and an interesting fact. Finding strangers is not hard, they're everywhere. Finding strangers who are willing to have their personal space invaded by a camera and reveal something about themselves to someone they've never met---well, that can be a little more tricky. I got a lot of people quickly saying "No" (and even one "Hell No"), but I also got a lot of people who gladly said "Sure." I think people are intrigued by the notion that they are being documented by someone who knows nothing about their personality or their life or circumstance and in the span of a few minutes, you walk away knowing one less stranger in this world.

One thing I enjoyed the most was talking to these people. Some of them instantly had incredible parts of their lives they wanted to share and others took a little while, not because they didn't have an interesting fact, but because I had a feeling it was not often they had someone to converse with. Some facts that I collected were truly interesting ("I was born in a meteor crater"), some were adventurous ("In 17 days, I'm going to jump out of a plane 7 times at 1,000 feet"), some were morbid ("I like working in graveyards") and some were a little silly ("I'm lookin' for a sugar mama"). A few of these turned into full-blown stories that could not be summed in one sentence---those were my favorite.