Feature Photo Adventure

Some people hate getting their picture taken and others love it. Truth is, no matter if you like it or not, everyone wants to be remembered or recognized in some way. So when a stranger with a nice looking camera asks if he or she can take your picture for an assignment, you are likely to grant them permission. However, the job of the photographer to ask this of you is a tad awkward and uncomfortable. This is what I experienced on my feature photo assignment as I walked the streets of Detroit surrounding Wayne State University to find an unplanned moment in time I could capture with my DSLR.

I began by walking the perimeters of campus, hoping to find a random skate boarder or students playing volleyball. Not too far into my unsuccessful walk, I ran into an old friend who told me I needed to go further from campus to capture some of these spontaneous photographs. As we parted ways he pointed me towards Third Street where my enterprise photo journey began. The further I walked, the more courageous I became. I started striking up long, personal conversations with everyone I got pictures of; A man painting a wall, a father and son changing their front door, even a man just walking down the street that came from Africa. My final stop was a construction site on my walk back to campus. The men were very friendly but their work was uninterrupted by my presence which made for the best enterprise photo on my walk. 

Construction workers from left Fernando, Wes, and Phil work on apartments by Wayne State University on an unusually hot Wednesday afternoon in November. (WSUpj photos by Gabriela Aguirre)

My event photo was less of a smooth sailing experience. Plans changed last minute and I was not able to shoot what I had originally planned. Thankfully, I found an event last minute when I heard a man with a microphone speaking from the basement of the Student Center. I immediately grabbed my camera, ran down the stairs, and found a hypnosis session was about to take place.  It was a better event photo shooting experience than I had planned. It didn’t feel like work, It was just fun.

Wayne State University students from left Gabrielle Hoults, Keerthana Palani and Ali Shahin are told to do their best impression of a Martian in outer space during a hypnosis session in the Wayne State Student Center basement on Wednesday.