The sun is high enough that it bores down hard through the thin but thick veneer of smoke and smog smothering Kashi, old Varanasi. In the midday heat, with camera in hand a bagful of lenses at the ready, I search for frames in a place of bounty so extreme as to be, in effect, daunting. It is impossible to exhaust the options, even without changing lenses.

“I would like you to take my picture.”

This is not the familiar request of one tourist asking another for a favour, as they offer their camera for a shot of themselves. Rather, it’s a local asking someone with a professional-looking camera to take their photograph. Record me. Eternalize me. Kids of all ages ask this of me often, especially in places that are populous and there are enough tourists about that the locals feel comfortable with them. That this question comes from an adult, especially one so beautiful, and with such arresting eyes, is rare. Rare, and disarming.

Nonetheless, I agree, then check the light and turn us around a bit so the sun falls on his features in just the right way. Two quick frames, nearly identical (I end up using the second), then I pull out a business card to offer while I thank him. He demurs about receiving a copy of the image file; the gesture is a gift to me. I thank him again. We small talk about our lives, the substance of which escapes me now, seven years later, not because his life is unremarkable but because my memory is. And then, we part.

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to edit and post this portrait. Simple as it is in form, it’s really quite remarkable due to the light and its subject. There’s more than a little Mona Lisa subtle intensity in his expression, most notably the intimacy of his gaze. I’m not sure that fighting the light to put the ancient buildings of old Varanasi as his background would have improved the result.

I do nearly regret not taking more frames of him, asking him if he’d accompany me a bit as a model. However, setting up portraits and models isn’t a mode of photography I’m practiced or comfortable with. When it comes to people, I’m more of a street photography poacher, someone who lays in wait or sneaks up on his subjects. The intimacy of this moment is not something I’m comfortable asking for. I think that affects my ability to frame such interactions between photographer, lens and subject. The personal interaction distracts me from creating the frame.

<smile> And, yes, there’s no small metaphor in that.

I think this photograph works so well because I made minimal effort to pose it, thought simply and quickly about light and framing, and allowed the subject to make his own statement. It’s a simple intimacy expressed warmly and naturally on both sides of the glass. The result is among the best portraits I’ve ever taken.