Photographing Strangers
Recently I started a new project over on my 35mm focused Instagram account, @nateigorsmith. My goal is to photograph 200 strangers on film and I figured I would put this blog post up to make myself accountable.
It started last April when I was hanging out with a bunch of photographers and it inspired me to shoot some street photography. I am somewhat known for my street work, but 90% of that work is just from living an insane life in one of the biggest cities in the world. I never went out of my way to shoot street photography, it just came to me. So last April I went out and shot those photos I was super disappointed in myself. I love street photography and I know what good work looks like, and my work was not good enough. I vowed to do a better job.
Unfortunately, I gave up on that vow very quickly. I didn’t do any proper street work after that, I just carried on with my life as normal until March when I left NYC and came to Wilmington, NC. It’s a great city, near the beach, super affordable, but I am not inspired here. All my best recent photos have come while I am traveling and I needed to force myself to take photos. So I came up with a plan: I would photograph 200 strangers.
This project started a few months ago, and some of it is proper street work, some of it is street portraits and some of it just random people I meet in my life. I am sort of post dating this project to anything that I photographed after I got those April 2023 photos back, but only a small percentage of the total project will be old stuff because I am forcing myself to go out to shoot new work. I am forcing myself to approach strangers and try and get rid of some of the anxiety I have photographing strangers, which is a new development in my life. I am not sure if it was the pandemic, or just getting older, but I don’t have the courage it takes to be a street photographer, and I want to try and fix that.
So to hold myself accountable, I am doing this blog post, and I have already posted several updates over on @nateigorsmith. You can see the first 20 strangers so far. I probably have about 60 done so far, so I got a lot of work to do going forward, but I am pretty excited for my trip to the NC State Fair this month.
Click here to follow my 35mm Instagram account and follow the my new project.
Ps. I recently scanned a bunch of newish NSFW instant film photos and uploaded them all to Girls of DBB. Just thought I would pass that info along in case you aren’t super interested in my street photography.
