Portraiture: The inside joke

I have a dilemma, a personal conflict if you will.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m a little uncomfortable taking photos of people without asking. But I love capturing people in the moment. A captured moment, when someone is at their most relaxed, can be a wonderful moment.

You can probably see the dilemma: If I stop the moment to ask permission, that moment is gone. So I usually do this kind of work when I’m with friends, at some gathering, and usually other people are taking photos, anyway, so there’s that tacit, understood permission, already.

Unlike a posed portrait, this kind of portraiture feels genuine, because it is.

I’ve intentionally changed the moment, though, by giving it a title that doesn’t relate to what was going on. The intent is to instill the photograph with additional meaning, sometimes different meaning. This is something I’m experimenting with. If I get more opportunities to do this kind of work, I’ll post them in the future.