Cliff

Stranger 3/100 – Cliff

Cliff at the Ottawa Farmers’ Market in Westboro.

I was wandering the neighbourhood looking for “Autumn in My Neighbourhood” images. Saturday is the Ottawa Farmers’ Market Day and starting this summer we have had a Westboro spin-off of the market just a few blocks from my house. I met Cliff in his booth for Glengyle Garlic. My talk with him was brief as I didn’t want to interfere with business although in the end I did make a modest purchase of 2 garlic bulbs. We started discussing photography and I mentioned that I did aerial photography using a kite. It turned out that for a portion of his career he was involved in aerial photography for a company doing work for Energy Mines and Resources. It was prior to digital in the days of Hasselblad cameras. He started to get fairly technical about some of the infrared and other specialized techniques used for a variety of purposes including photographing baby seals (white) from above. I started to realize that I was speaking to someone who knew more about photography than I did and I offered to change places – I would sell garlic while he took my picture. With Cliff’s portrait I threw in my first experiment with the built-in flash to fill some of the shadows since he was backlit. As a landscape photographer, fill flash is not something I have used much so I was quite happy with the result.

This picture is #3 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.

My 100 Strangers Set on Flickr.

My 100 Strangers website gallery.