How it works

Although we initially had bigger plans for today, we watched a movie into the early hours of the morning and couldn't get up early enough so we decided to head to Shoreditch High Street and Brick lane again.

It's always an interesting mix of people and a clash of colours.

Just after grabbing a bagel at Beigel Bake, I spotted these two eccentric looking characters.

I never thought I was too comfortable with taking photos of strangers, but my girlfriend was even less sure about it.

After a brief debate about the pros and cons of shooting strangers, I'm still not convinced that I should ask people if I can take their photo.

From the perspective of politeness, I feel I should ask.

From a photographic viewpoint, I'm not necessarily looking to capture a portrait and asking takes the spontaneity out of the moment.

Also from life experience, I prefer acting first.

The "asking bit", post-snap is still missing, so I might try to add that to my repertoire next time and see how I fare.

It also feels a little alien to me not to properly frame my photos. What happened to the upright verticals? Is the image slightly blurred? Yes...and I probably should have chosen a faster shutter speed.

I suppose the moment is sometimes more important than technical details. After all a photo is about an image made by variations in focal length (fixed, in this case), shutter speed and aperture (and iso).

ISO200, f/5.6, 1/30s, RAW