Sarasota Farmers Market, Soap Stall
“A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.”
— Anne Leibovitz
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Here is another photo that requires no explanation of the narrative. Body language says it all. It’s clear what the girl wants. The question is, will mother/grandmother yield to her charms? When I people show me their street photos, they are often ones taken in exotic locations such as the streets of Mumbai, or Havana, or Barcelona. They are usually colorful, mostly touristy, and sometimes quite good. Good street photography, however, is more about the everyday ordinary than it is about the exotic. It is about making visible, that which is mostly invisible to others. It is about capturing and freezing a decisive moment. There is no great drama here, just an endearing interaction between child and adult.
Because street photography tends to be spontaneous, its mostly not possible to rearrange the scene, for example, reorganizing the background. Here, the background is way too sunny and bright and way too cluttered with furniture, a fence, truck, foliage, and signage. What could I do, the little girl with ribbons in her hair that echoed the ribbons on the fence, was irresistible. I simply had to take her portrait. Because they were standing in the shade of the awning, I increased the exposure compensation to light up her face. The background then became even more overexposed, a small price to pay.
