I was just walking to my car on my way home, when I noticed him working meticulously on a car door. I looked to my left, and there was a van filled with what seemed like an endless number of little bottles and tools.
I must have walked by this van a hundred times, and it's never been open, and I've always been curious about the owner and what they did with it.
Cue Tony. I had originally walked past him, and then decided to go back. "Hi there!" I said, to which he replied, "I had a feeling you'd be coming back." From there, I knew this was going to be a great interaction.
Tony runs his own little business doing touch-ups on cars, which he's been doing for 15 years. As I took photos of him and we chatted, I found out that after he officially retires, he and his wife are going travelling around the world for 10 years. And I don't mean just down south, I'm talking Asia, Africa, Oceania - proper travelling.
Recently I've been thinking about this project and the restrictions I put on it. I think that although I will likely return to the headshot with eye contact, part of this project is about telling people's stories, of which their environment is often a large part of. In this case, that elusive van was something that I really wanted to showcase, which I wouldn't have been able to do with the format I had previously constrained myself to.
As such, I've decided to be more open about the composition, and realized that as with many creative endeavours, change is simply a product of the process.