While we are waiting for the next topic, here's a name: My son likes to play fantasy role playing games on the Internet. One of his characters is a Minotaur King. (You know, half human, half bull). The name my son gave this character is, Lactose the Intolerant.

arra?????

did Arra cast votes?
what is Oyez Oyez, Oyez Seymour?

I forgot to congrats the host for such a nice work :-)

Forgot to say..............Hurry up Arra:-)

Gawd who's Arra? :-) Well done mate on winning wiv a fine shot indeed & very nice light. A few double ups in the top five too, show off's. Anyhow me & the girls are ready for the next one.
Seymour, yes I have seen a couple of those Dibley shows & it's very funny a. Mind you The part Trevor Peacock plays isn't quite up to me intelligence level cos I stayed at school until I was 15:-)

Congratulations Arra, well done and to the runners up as well, many very good entries.

10/10 Arra a good image & a worthy win. Tommy, MC and Ivan good work. Now we look forward to the "Next" Challenge :-).

Etna you were great as a host. Congratulations to Arra and well done to the top place positions!!

Congratulations Arra and also well done to Tommy, Mcsaba and Ivan

Congrats to all the high scorers!! And to Etna for being a fine host.

Martin, I think your challenge might rather be called People and their Peculiarities. Somehow Stolen Portraits doesn't work for me (just thinking of myself and how I would feel if I were chosen as a subject). I enjoyed all the examples very much - great show!

Congrats, Arra - this one was certainly one of my fave images in the challenge.

Congrats Arra for winning, MCsaba, Tommy and Ivan for the top five! And special thanks to all for the active participation!

Congrats Arra mate, terrific shot and a well deserved winner!. Congrats Mr. Csaba, Tommy, and Ivan also!.

SG, I never saw Blow-up but definitely gonna take a look, thanks for the tip! For some reason I was thinking you were referring to 'one-hour photo' and that got me thinking huhh? Flophouse? ;)

Oooh, and congrats Arra!

Really good question, Rod. I really don't know. But photographically speaking, the idea of a stolen portrait is much more than just the face. Dress, posture, backdrop.... you can easily take a formal shot of a white person and say, there, it's nicely framed, the subject's posture is interesting, the backdrop fits, and I, the viewer, may likely say the subject appears to be an interesting person in some way, though never really convinced of it since I know the scene had been staged. Now do the same to unsuspecting people in a public place and good luck spotting a free spirit type doing something other than sipping a coke from a straw a big red paper cup while sporting a baseball cap, nylon backpack, cellphone in hand, etc. Less of that in Peru, for example, more of it in Oz, for example. However, you'll find ideal subjects in either place, mate, just have to strategize differently for each ;)

Not a portrait to me John, and sleeping people don't count at all as far as I'm concerned unless you really find them in a fantastic 'pose'. This one, in my opinion, is 'posed' better than I ever could have deliberately posed her, along with the backdrop: [link]

On a related not, I'll be off to Venice again in a few days.... nice to be within a couple hours' drive. Suckers! ;)

cont...

Then look at Europe, where much of the environment is deliberately preserved to maintain that 'old world' charm. Apart from just a few large cities where one may encounter at most a pickpocket or scammer (and I tell ya, you have to be a really dopey tourist to get yourself targeted), you're absolutely safe even after dusk. You've got plenty of backdrops and plenty of varied personalities along with not being a pressing need here for people to get nose jobs, boob jobs, cosmetics to hide wrinkles etc., nor to wear generic-looking clothing full of mfr logos (I'd say people tend to go for more elegant wardrobes here). So you've got maybe 60% of the opportunities vs. Peru, since of course noticeably enough billboard cities and vanity exist as well. So you go to your ideal location and you don't need to really travel far to get there. Perhaps this is the problem in the US, that locations are available too but they're few and far between.

Bottom line is I guess I've never really in practice considered one place being more 'easy' vs. another, not if you're willing to stick around spots where you're likely to get what you want and know how to immerse yourself in various types of crowds. A landscape photographer has to travel and seek out a scene, not sit in a pub waiting for a landscape to walk through the door ;) Landscapes are everywhere. Stolen portraits are everywhere. In either case one has to actively seek them out.

Oh I agree, SG, that's why I wrote that this topic would take a bit of patience (meaning not just waiting at some spot for an opportunity but to actually go to places where such opportunities abound -- diners, trains, buses are good examples). Even so, I think if I were in the US wanting to find these kinds of portraits, I'd want to be in NYC or SF, two cities where I believe people more freely express their idiosyncrasies publicly. Not to say it isn't so in other US locales and certainly depending on what kinds of portraits/environments you want to get. But this is a sort of basic thinking, like placing your bets where the odds are best when in reality each location has its own pluses/minuses. Peru has two minuses: you're never safe in public (esp. if you're visibly a foreigner and have valuables in your possession, eg. camera); people actually don't like being photographed much, many even fear that you're stealing their soul, so stealthiness is necessary like anywhere else... the plus is that you're not likely to find subjects surrounded by franchise signage, billboard ads, etc as it's not a very developed country, so you get an opportunity there to catch a person amidst a good backdrop whereas that same person may not be very 'photogenic' if he were doing something on the streets of, say, Cincinnati.

cont...

Is this a stolen portrait? Ok, I know it's not a portrait. Also they are all sleeping so ... it's not stolen, just a little sneaky. I'm good at sneaky...I wear sneakers. [link]

Martin I wonder if a Persian, Peruvian or Africans would think shots of Aussies, Yanks & Poms would be exotic. Mind you look at all the people shots done by the greats & not so greats around America & England in the past, they took terrific images a.

I had to Google Trevor Peacock to see who he was & I know the face well but not the name. Yes I think I would pick him too & maybe for the American version maybe we could afford for Danny DeVito to do it:-)

Thanks RK, those shots of a night out in Cardiff were terrific, I couldn't stop looking at them. Every photo was full of interest & very well seen & taken. The other thing is they all worked so well in colour without any B&W on show, mind you I think he was showing the night out as a really good time warts & all but in B&W I think they would have looked quite grim & a place not to visit but seeing them in colour made me want to go there.

Yeah, it's definitely an asset to be in certain locales for these kinds of shots, Peru being a very good one. Still, 4 of those 10 pics were taken in Europe and in a shorter timespan (3 yrs here so far vs. 4+ in Peru), and with less time to spend taking photos. In the end it evens out imo, if you do this in Peru, you've a good chance of having your camera snatched (along with your wallet, jewelry, etc), while in Europe and probably even moreso N.America/Oz people in public just aren't as interesting to observe, not to mention the surroundings are usually too modern to serve as good backdrops. Patience is the main thing in either scenario, it can be done but I doubt any of us would find a 10-day challenge period to be enough.

btw when I say 'people aren't as interesting' in the aforementioned places, I only mean to say with regards to photography (or to be more precise, stolen portraits) ;)

Rod, thats a great idea to shoot after the pubs close... you got to check this link out...
[link]

Flowers & Sunsets or Flowers OR Sunsets ?

Yes Martins picys are full of foreigners a. It's hard to get shots of Aussies just sitting around the streets, I would have to go into the pubs to get shots like that. Mind you when the pub closes I could get heaps of shots of people laying in the streets.
My topics would be flowers & sunsets:-)

Thanks Martin, those pictures look amazing... you are right, it will require a lot time/patience. It will be a challenge, maybe thats what we need.