passersby

Editors like to say, "There are great pictures to be made right in your own backyard!"

Come to think of it, there really is a lot going on in my backyard, or at least in my Baltimore back alley. Fugitives from justice have fled down my alley, pursued by police helicopters. I once found a trail of blood that stretched for hundreds of yards. I followed it the whole way, and at the end found a guy with a badly cut hand sitting on a curb.

Photographer Nathan Bett has an unusual series of photos titled Learning to Disappear, which shows New Yorkers walking by in various parts of their city. What curious about the images, however, is that most of the passers-by in the frames are staring straight at Bett's camera.

On Saturday, April 11, 2015, I stood on Valencia Street in San Francisco for 12 hours and offered free portraits to anyone that passed by. I'll share a little about what the experience was like.