Kelly has been a professional photographer and he is quite comfortable taking pictures in many situations where I would be way too embarrassed. But the other day, he snapped a picture of some women in a marketplace and noticed that one of them cringed a bit.

That got his creativity going. Since our digital camera allows you to hold it away from your body and view the image through a small screen on the back of the camera, he tried sitting on a bench and doing that.

Nobody noticed but the framing on the pictures was sloppy. So his next step was to buy a small rectangular mirror in a case, the kind a woman would use to check her lipstick. He went out with it and the camera yesterday, and sat on a bench on a busy street near the mercado (marketplace) here in Guanajuato.

He used the mirror at a 45-degree angle to reflect the image, which was upside down, but at least he could see the image and tell whether it was more or less framed properly. He took some 75 images this way, and came home to play with the results.

Fifteen of the pictures ended up in this Guanajuato street animation. Choose the slide show, and you can set how quickly you watch it. There’s a lot to notice! I didn’t see the woman mopping the sidewalk until about the third time I watched it.

This animation is up at a very interesting website called flickr.com, where a lot of photographers have put up photos and photoessays of many kinds. I was particularly delighted by many closeup portraits taken by a man who has traveled widely.

They got me thinking that I could take more pictures of people if I just asked them. So off I went with the camera, and the two photos in this blog entry are my first results.

The man works at a little coffeeshop that has become a favorite of ours (on Pocitos, right by the Tunel Santa Fe) and the woman works at a bakery we frequent. She was a bit self-conscious, but I think she will like the results. I played with the images using Photoshop Elements. I’ve got copies printed out to give them both… and a new approach to photography while a tourist!