Picking up my friends camera and taking it out for a day with the goal of approaching strangers and taking their portrait was a daunting exercise to say the least. I'd hardly even got my head around using the camera, the illustration style was still in it's infancy, and trying to connect with a random passerby so that they'd feel comfortable enough to have their photo taken sounded outrageous at first.

In the peak of Vancouver Summer however, everyone was in a lighthearted mood, lulled into happiness by the beaming Sun, and sure enough there were bright eyed people wandering around as eager to meet new people as I was. Enter Ryan.

Ryan was travelling from Seattle en route to Tokyo and had a day in Vancouver left to his own devices before his flight. I spotted him from a mile away with his beaming smile looking around in way that clearly advertised "I'm not from here." This was probably my first experience of having a camera in a hand out in public and realising it is a natural magnet for creatively inclined and curious people, they can't help but look at it and wonder why it's hanging around my neck or grasped in hand and this look became a quick and easy indicator that the chances were high they'd be open to being approached.

Ryan was instantly jovial and interested in the project, he got it, or rather appreciated the intent without much explanation and we dived right in to taking his photo. Pretty quickly I realised I'm interested in the little micro expressions displayed between ideas, between thoughts, when for just a moment in a conversation we are alone with ourselves. Something real and genuine comes out in these gaps without effort, in between the excitement for his first trip alone without his family there equally uncertainty and self doubt about how he'd handle it, or perhaps that is really how I knew I would have felt in his shoes, the line between the two is too difficult to discern and this tension between what I see in the other person vs. what is actually there is the main inspiration for my illustrations.

Over the coming months I extending this approach to people who all had a part in my life in one way or another, from a Tinder date through to my best friends, colleagues and ex-partners and here are the results.