Portrait Diversity

I didn’t know it at the time. Last week I needed to take photos of people I didn’t know for the weekly photo challenge. We knew we would have a lot of options on the National Mall. The idea of having to ask someone if you can take their photograph can be daunting - especially since we have been out of practice for a couple of years. So we parked at the Air and Space Museum and made our way around the mall starting at the Smithsonian gardens. Without even thinking about it - and after two flat out rejections - there were five really nice portraits of a very diverse group of people. There was a white guy gardener at the Smithsonian Gardens by the castle, an African American male and an African American female greeter at the National Gallery of Art east and west building, a Vietnamese male at his food truck in front of the Capitol, and another female white gardener at the US Botanic Garden talking about bees. It was actually a fun excursion and all of the people who participated were really animated and posed so nicely! I told them all I would also be posting their images on Instagram. So far the many comments I have received on my 52frames page this week have been so positive. I ended up selecting the truck vendor because his smile was simply contagious. Sometimes the subject matter for the weekly challenge is not very exciting. I really liked this one.