Photo awakening

Recently I spent a day walking around Union Square in San Francisco. Before this trip I spent a lot of time photographing objects. I stopped to photograph a clock and saw a street performer who was playing drums on empty paint cans, buckets and water bottles. I didn't have a lot of experience photographing people I don't know, but wanted to capture this person so my first photos of him were at a distance, from behind.

I packed up my camera bag and went accross the street to give him a few dollars. While I placed the money in his can I started talking to him and asked if I could photograph him. It was a different experience for me because while behind the camera we continued to talk. I felt really comfortable photographing him while we continued talking. He talked about his experiences on the street and how he makes enough money to rent a room by the week. He also talked about his dream to make enough money to rent a recording studio.  After downloading the pictures from my day in San Francisco I kept going back to the pictures of  this street performer. That one event changed me as a photographer because I realized at that point in time that my love of communicating with people is  able to be captured and portrayed through the lens of my camera.