I was walking along Congress Ave. with my friend, Frank. We'd just crossed Third St. and we were heading north. This man was at the intersection and he caught my eye and I caught his. We smiled at each other while Frank and I walked by. Five steps later I turned around and approached him. "How's it going?" I asked. "Pretty good." was the reply. I asked him if I could make his portrait and he smiled and gave me his permission. I directed him a little bit. I asked him to look right into the lens of my camera. He did. I clicked off a few frames, thanked him and shook his hand.
Then he hesitantly asked me if I could trade him one or two dollar bills for the change he had in his pocket. I didn't need the change but I had spare ones. We wished each other well and Frank and I continued north on our walk through downtown. It was a nice encounter. His face is wonderful and his handshake was expressive. It made me happy to be a photographer.
I spent today with my camera in the "black and white" mode. That's a setting on the picture styles dial. I shot the largest size, extra fine Jpegs. I was using a Sony a77 camera and this portrait was done with a 50mm 1,4 Sony lens that I picked up used recently for a couple hundred dollars. I was shooting at ISO 400, 1/1250th of a second, f2.8. I added a little contrast and warmth to the file in post processing.
I'm very happy with the series photographs this man gave me and consider it a small sign from the universe that I'm on the right track.
