Shooting Strangers in Orchard Road (Danny Santos II)

Self Portrait of Danny Santos II

As we roll into the weekend, and as our thoughts shift from business towards planning for our weekend shooting, I wanted to share with you a photographer and his blog that has been inspiring me for a little while now:  Street photographer Danny Santos II and his blog/galleries Shooting Strangers in Orchard Road.

Santos, originally from the Philippines, moved to Singapore in 2008 and has been shooting street photography ever since.  Singapore offers a nice cross section of humanity – it’s a crowded city filled with people from several different cultures.  The city is more of a melting pot than the United States.  Santos focuses on street portraiture – portraits of (often) unsuspecting strangers as they move about in their day.

What makes Santos’s work stand apart from the typical street photographer’s is continuity and style.  He hosts eight galleries on his site, all having to do with street photography.  And though one of the galleries focuses on street scenes, the balance share a common theme:  Portraiture.  He takes advantage of unique lighting situations (tree-lined streets letting only small sections of light through) and careful framing to isolate faces in a crowd.  He shelters his camera in notoriously bad weather to capture the beauty of human emotion on an otherwise ugly day.  But above all, natural and enigmatic facial expressions seem to be the underlying theme in his work.

So check out Santos’s blog and galleries, Shooting Strangers in Orchard Road.  Be sure to check out my two favorite galleries:  Bad Weather and A Face in the Crowd.  Mr. Santos is also available on Flickr and Twitter (@dannysantos).