My original post was here

So, I started off following the DJ Forums Bootcamp but couldn't find the time to go out and do much of what it was calling for. I've been working late and have family in town so opportunities to just go off and deviate from the routine of going from point a to point b have been limited. I also dug around with the Rules of the Game in my spare time but again haven't had time to practice it.

I went out of town with some friends for a long weekend just recently and we wound up on MDMA for the first time one afternoon which sort of gave me the kick in the pants I needed to go off and approach random people. As I mentioned in the original post, I wanted to use some of this as an excuse to get some pictures of people. While on the stuff, I noticed very early on that all the social filters I have keeping me from talking to strangers are all bunk. There's no reason not to say hi to strangers and try to find out what they're up to and get some pictures/videos of them. As part of the process, I promised to send pics to the people I shot and got a handful of email addresses, exchanged FB information, and in a few cases just links to my Flickr profile.

The afternoon wound up being a total success, though, in the drug addled state I was in, I can't say for certain if I came across as coherent person and not as a vagrant.

After sobering up, I realized I'm way more comfortable with walking right up to people in parks, sitting down and just snapping away and trying to initiate conversation. Went out for a photo walk with a friend yesterday just to explore and get some pictures. Anytime we saw some interesting people, I would try to walk up to them and get some closer shots. Got some neat conversations in - met an old guy chilling on his front porch, got told off by some pretentious hipster-punks, met this cool lady just dancing in the middle of the street to her headphones for no apparent reason, got some video footage of a group of people chilling in the park and jamming on their acoustic guitars, and tons of others.

I like this - using the camera as an opener seems to be working well for fleeting moments and conversations. It's also helping me formulate a new photo set/concept to capture the essence of spring through photography. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this goes. Looking at this further, I think I need to get a pen and notepad to actually get contact information from people and possibly a simple business card to handle people who look at me funny and ask "what I intend on doing". The problem with the business card route is that it's too formal and impersonal whereas I get a kick out of trying to explain what I'm doing and the reason I'm trying to shoot people rather than Toronto's generally boring architecture.

The downside - I haven't developed any sort of "lets stay in touch" type of connection with anyone from any of the groups I've met