When I began my project photographing in the southern states of the US, I’d only recently developed the confidence needed to take effective portraits. Speaking publicly or talking with people used to make me very nervous. But I was mainly photographing architecture – I knew I wanted to change and make people my subject. So I simply forced myself to endure the anxiety. I picked locations where people gathered in public, such as beaches or parks, and would make myself walk up to them and ask for permission to photograph them.
If you do anything long enough, you start to get good at it, and eventually I turned myself into a very assertive photographer. I’m not an intimidating person – I’m small in stature – and generally speaking people like me. On any given day, if I were to ask 20 people to pose for me, 19 would say yes.
