There Are Faces I Remember

I shot hundreds of images on my recent trip. I’m sure you can imagine. And I’m still going through them. Friends and family want to see pictures, so I show them some. Then I got back to the hard drive and find more to process, more to add to the “Finals” folder. And I then want to show these images. So many I’m really enjoying….

Great scenes, great architecture. But it’s the faces that I keep coming back to. The faces that, literally, I’m sure will never really leave my mind. They may fade, but these people whose path I crossed have made an impression. And I’m happy I made their image using some pixel dust.

Like the old woman in Saratov, Russia, begging for a few rubles outside of a church we used as a backdrop in one of our photos. Saw her there two days in a row. Mother Russia personified perhaps.

Ramis, maybe the only person – aside from some of my Russia colleagues who were charms – we saw laugh and smile while there. He enjoyed having the camera pointed his way and we enjoyed shooting him. Very fun gent.

There were others from Russia too…Sergey, the doctor we met, his young patient. The talkative hotel bartender in Saratov, Nicholas. The personal trainer wearing the cowboy boots that we met in Kazan. Looked more like he was the personal trainer to the Russia Beer Drinking team, but he assured us he had a number of wealthy clients.

Then once we hit India, it was about the faces. Character etched on every one we saw. Whereas no one cracked a smile in Russia, you would have thought that the people in India were living on spun cotton drinking milk with honey with every meal. Smiles at every turn, no matter how destitute the surroundings might have been.

She was certainly happy to flash me a smile.

As was this young lad, in the heart of Crawford Market on a steamy Sunday.

Sometimes, all you have to do is bring the camera up…and the Pixel Gods smile down on you. Who can complain?

© Mark V. Krajnak 2009 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software.