The Photographer

Photographing photographers is a fascinating challenge. Doing it candid is even more so.

Yesterday I was downtown and I made these two photos:

The first photo is a testament to the empathy that led me to shoot.

She, really interesting, very fashionable, with something vintage that refers to the 70s. Those cameras, film, a Nikon that she's using and the other a Canon point & shoot hanging from her body. Her focus before shooting is the documentation of the photographic process.

The second shot I did by passing her and turning around.

An instant before her shot. In making this photo I can offer some details at closer range, let the observer enter even more into the story of this photographer. We know something more of her hair, the handkerchief that collects it, of the camera we can see the mounted roll. We can almost determine the setting of the photo she will do.

This is street photography, guys. To show the beauty of life and of the characters that animate public places. To enter into an empathy with the subjects that attract you to somehow tell a portion of their existence. No intervention. She didn't even notice me. And I was able to grasp the intimate act of photographing, the attention in observing, in waiting for the right moment, the decision of when to raise the camera to frame through the viewfinder. There is a lot of the photographic act in these two shots. For me the real photographic process is essentially this, or at least the heart of it.

Throughout my life as a photographer I have had the opportunity to portray other photographers many times. I've done this most often in situations where the subjects were aware that I was going to photograph them. I did it even when they didn't realize I was photographing them, of course. And it's something that fascinates me. Photographing other photographers is an exciting challenge. Inevitably you are under scrutiny by the photographer himself, especially in the case of pre-agreed shots.

In this case there was no interaction.

So she will probably never know about these two photos. But in the case she will read this article can contact me and I will give her a print of these two photos.