I was looking forward to shooting a lot of portraits of strangers in the 3-day weekend we just had here in Singapore. But due to time constraints brought about by personal chores, I wasn’t able to go out on my usual 3-hour jaunts of just wandering around and looking for great faces. Instead, I just had an hour of shooting last Friday, and another hour last Saturday – and after the long weekend, I only got one portrait. I was initially glum about it. But looking at this portrait, of the 65 strangers I’ve photographed so far, I think it’s one of my favorites – and made me feel better about the weekend that just passed by :)

So after an hour of walking around last Saturday at about 6pm, I saw a slight sunlight partially shining through the overcast sky. I knew this was just perfect soft light for portraits, so I camped out on a spot in Orchard Road that was free of trees and shade. After a few minutes of waiting, I saw her walking briskly, listening to music in her ipod, completely standing out of the crowd with her unique beauty. I stopped her and asked if I could take her photo. I could sense her hesitation so I explained what I was doing and handed her my call card. She finally said ‘yes.’ After a few clicks, I thanked her and she went on her way. I knew immediately that I had a keeper shot.

This photo reached #1 in Flickr’s Explore for May 31, 2010. ‘Explore’ is Flickr’s countdown of the top 500 photos of the day. This is my 2nd photo that reached #1… the first one was my keeper of the month last April.

Big big thanks to this beautiful stranger :)