So I recently met up with a friend to try and get some 100 stranger portraits. I felt that I had regained my 100 stranger virginity and needed to get out there and get going again. I didn’t get any that night but I had made a promise to myself to get out there on the weekend.

I had spotted this colourful spiral a while back, the only problem… it’s in the middle of bloody nowhere with barely any footfall. I decided that today was the day that I would just be patient and hopefully find a suitable stranger. I did have a specific type of stranger in mind but when I saw Camilla standing nearby I decided that she would be great for the shot.

I approached Camilla and she was intrigued but was a little sceptical too. I showed her my flickr stream and she commented that she liked the shots I had taken so far which was nice to hear. She agreed to have some pictures taken but I had to wait for her friend Chloe. She wasn’t feeling photogenic having been on a 15 hour flight back home from Rome (another good reason to never fly Ryan Air) and would only do shots with both of them in it. While we waited it was nice to chat with her for a bit. After taking some fun shots Camilla agreed to do the shot I had in mind.

Now positioning for this shot was a difficult and I ended up having to make some sacrifices to get the shot. The main one was that I had an 85mm lens which would mean going onto the middle of a busy roundabout to get the whole background. The second problem I had was that the centre point of the spiral was a little too high and while I got down a little lower and didn’t want to go too far as it would distort the angles of the background. I got her positioned as best I could and then added a reflector to bring in some catchlights.

Camilla was also in the middle of a “100” project being “100 happy days” although she stalled at around 50. She is on her way to Australia soon though so that’s one more reason to be happy. Thank you Camilla and Chloe for being a part of my project.

Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the

100 Strangers Flickr Group Page