Just Don’t Get Caught

A few days ago, I was shooting on the streets. Not guns. I’m in China. There are none. I was shooting photos, of people, of life, of moments unfolding in front of me. Though at times I feel that these days taking photographs is just like shooting guns, because whenever people realize I’m taking their photos, they hide, they duck, or they put their phones in front of their faces. I miss the days when I used to walk around freely with my 35mm film camera, and people didn’t care at all. But reality is different now, and I have adapted. The smaller the camera, the easier it is for me to photograph people without alarming them.

So, I was surprised when this girl walked up to me and asked if I wanted to photograph her friends. She wore an oversized graphic T-shirt, a short denim shorts, knee-length socks, and retro-feel Vans Old Skool shoes; a carefree girl. She put down her skateboard, hopped on it, and skated away. I followed behind.

It was the golden hour; the time of the day just before sunset, when the light is almost perfect. When I reached the group of skateboarders, they didn’t hide, or duck, or scroll on their phones. Instead, they did their tricks, they did their work, they lived their life. I wished I had my digital SLR camera on me, but then I remembered that the best camera is the one you have on you. These days I mostly shoot with my OnePlus phone, which has a Hasselblad lens. So, I took out my phone, changed the camera settings to manual, and started shooting. This is one of my favorite things to do.

I was laying on the ground, shooting the skateboarders, when the carefree girl stopped to look at me, she placed her skateboard against the light pole, and came sat next to me. “Show me,” she said. I passed her my phone. She skimmed through them, and then deleted all the photographs I took of her. “Didn’t you like them?” I asked. “This is just one side of me,” she passed me my phone back. “What do you mean?” I was intrigued. She took my phone back, went into the deleted folder, and deleted the deleted photos, “always get rid of the root,” she smiled, gave me my phone back, and went back to skateboarding.

All of a sudden, we heard a police siren. There was a golf-cart looking police vehicle approaching us. All the skateboarders shouted something in Chinese and quickly vanished. I couldn’t believe how fast they were on those boards. I got up and made my way to the metro station. When I was 50 meters away from the entrance of the station, I heard someone shouting from across the street. It was the skateboarders waving at me. I crossed the street and met up with them.

“We’re going to a pub, you wanna join?” the carefree girl said. I nodded. She got off her skateboard, said something to her friends in Chinese, and waved at them. They skated away. “Let them go,” she said.

“I have a question,” I said. She looked at me. “When you deleted your photos, you said, that was just one side of you. What did you mean?”

“You cannot capture me in one photo,” she stopped in front of a small street shop, took a step forward, and felt the texture on the shutter of the shop. “Take my photo here,” she posed in front of the closed shutter. I took her photo, and then we continued walking.

At the pub, I officially met everyone, and showed them the photographs I took earlier that evening. They told me about other locations where they skateboard, and invited me to shoot them in action. After a few drinks, one of the guys handed the carefree girl a hemp cloth bag, and waved everyone a farewell. That’s when the carefree girl got up, grabbed my hand, and said, “let’s get out of here.” I didn’t know what it meant, because we weren’t flirting, there weren’t any sparks, there were no signs.

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll show you another side of me,” she laughed.

We walked towards the metro station. When we passed the same small street shop, she took out a can of spray from the hemp cloth bag, drew a graffiti on the closed shutters, and ran. I panicked, and then ran after her. We stopped when we reached the metro station.

“What did you draw?”

“You,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I wrote your name in Chinese,” she laughed.

“But, isn’t graffiti illegal in China?” I said.

“So? Just don’t get caught,” she put her mask on, hailed a cab, and left.