Like I always say, knowing a little of the local language goes a long way when asking a person for a portrait. I like to think that’s how I managed to capture such a generous smile from this guy at Beng Mealea temple outside of Siem Reap in Cambodia.
Literally just a few minutes after I took last week’s Monday Memories photo of children playing in the atmospheric ruins at Beng Mealea, a pleasant drive from Siem Reap, I ran into this man on a trail on the way back to our car.
He was on his way home on his pushbike after picking up a new plant for replanting and ‘borrowing’ a coconut from one of the nearby trees for a drink, as the heat of the day had really started to take hold.
We exchanged the classic Khmer greetings, then I had to sadly default to English. In broken English, he said he lived only five minutes away and was as keen as I was to get home and out of the sun.
I gestured to him if it was okay for me to make his portrait. He nodded and gave me this smile and I quickly snapped off a couple of frames – from asking him to when we exchanged our goodbyes, it took around 30 seconds.
Speed is always of the essence in these situations because often people become a little uncomfortable if you’re playing around with the camera for a while before you shoot. You literally have just a few seconds together the shot before people tend to become uncomfortable.
I can’t stress this enough if you want to get natural portraits of people when travelling: learn a little of the language and be ready with your camera!
Details: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm F2.0/D @ F5.6 @ 1/400th second @ ISO800.
