candid shots

*angelica, our boss's daughter, wandering around the neighborhood shrine that her relatives had recently built and dedicated.*

i was telling some new friends how much i preferred candid photographs over the kind where people are posed and expecting their picture to be taken. it's a really great way to capture a moment, and get a better idea of the personality of a person or a city. i mean, nature doesn't freeze in place and primp when we take its picture. so i guess it makes sense to take pictures of people that aren't anticipating that moment to be caught on digital pixels.

that being said, i was looking over my past few blog posts of this trip and realized that most of the pictures i have posted are of either immobile things like graffiti or completely posed shots. so i went through the photographs, and there haven't been as many good candid shots as i'd like, but here are the few.

*a woman in a bakery we shopped at. many people wear the medical masks over the mouths as a precaution against getting smog in their lungs. more people own scooters and bikes than they do cars, so you can see why people wouldn't want to be injesting that all the time. the photo on the right is of a boy at a night market, at a little booth where tiny fish were being sold.*

the picture below was also taken at the night market. it's difficult to see in this picture, but there are rows and rows of toys that people tried to throw little balls into the win prizes.

i also think that i've also mentioned that we ride our bikes everywhere. it is a thrilling experience. one of the teachers from past semesters actually suggested that we think of riding our bikes in taiwan like we're in a video game. and that is helpful, with all the obstacles of narrow lines, uneven road, scooters coming from every direction, cars that approach within an inch of your life. i've adopted following song as personal mantra for joining the epic challenge of taiwanese traffic:

loves,








missy me.