Stranger #36

Eight hours before this image I was on location shooting a commercial client's personnel images. I was 120 miles from home. When the shoot ended I went back to the hotel and slept for about four hours. The room was plenty nice and the bed was comfy enough, but I was alone and away. This was enough to disrupt my usual routine.

Ironically, it is that precise disruption that created this project and later led to stranger portraits.

Once I had a few cups of hotel coffee in me I rounded up all my belongings and headed for the car. On my way and with overfull hands I noticed this man sitting just as you see him, smoking his cigarette. Six thirty in the morning. I was sure to lift my fistful of belonging to gesture a hello, which was returned with a nod.

I still needed my last cup of coffee, the only thing I had no room left to hold, waiting in my fourth floor room.

After again exiting the building I walked straight out the door and approached him. Interestingly, for a brief moment I thought about hospice and how often I enter homes of people whom I have never met, to help someone who is in some stage of their own death, often with a house filled with distressed loved ones, waiting for me to somehow fix things. All this while walking towards him.

Immediately and with a smile I introduced myself - just as I would in hospice. I explained that I was preparing to leave from an overnight stay needed for a photography shoot. Turns out he was just as passionate about photography. Even has family who teaches it.

I explained my projects and how he was destined to be in this one (that is subtle, sarcastic confidence as I have learned to carefully employ) which he quickly agreed to participate in.

What you see here is what I saw when I walked my overnight belongings and camera gear to the car, in the sunrise cresting the eastern edge of Washington. That bright light shone past his pickup, blasted off the hotel and back against his face and hat. I spotted this moment the instant I first walked out the door.

And because of his participation the whole world now sees what I saw, which I feel was a moment worth immortalizing.

When I first began photographing strangers I was terrified of approaching people to ask for a photo, but deep down I knew that I meant well and that my only barrier would be my ability to express that, or one's abject unwillingness to care.

And it's a challenge I am willing to face. I do it with hospice patients, and now with a camera I do the same. Breaking the comfort zone for anyone like me.

That is how one grows.