Photographing people who are unaware

Hanging around outback towns, camps, communities, and cattle stations, fitting in as best you can, even though you stick out like a sore thumb, is one way to make candid shots. The other is to cruise the back streets of towns and country roads hunting out unusual photographs of people going about their daily lives. Rodeos, horse races - anything organised by the locals for the locals, are the best. I find tourist events of least interest because they don't pull in the real characters. The locals sometimes deliberately twist the word "tourists" into "terrorists" - and they keep their distance.

So, the primary objective is not to be seen as a tourist. You may be able to merge with the crowd, but for me, a big bloke with curly hair and a beard, and a teetotaller to boot, it's not so easy. I simply don't try. To a certain extent I have an advantage because I usually go in with an armful of books for the children so the locals feel happy about my presence to the extent that, after a short while, I am ignored. There are other ways to win acceptance - putting on a slide show wins hearts and minds! You want to disappear into the woodwork so you can shoot the comings and goings in a candid fashion.

If you are in a major centre the size of Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs, Mount Isa or Longreach, you might try joining the locals and doing what they are doing. Spend time; the more time you invest and interest you show, the more you will connect with people. Above all, talk to them. Look for character, watch the body language and have fun.

If people think my attention is on the background, I am able to approach them - they may be well aware of my presence but they are unaware of my intention to include them in my shot. Even if they are initially suspicious, they soon write me off as just another camera-happy tourist. I can then get up-close and personal images with the wide-angle, prefocused lens that enables me to include the overall environment in the picture and have the foreground and background in focus.

When composing with people, keep your eyes peeled for settings that say something. If the folk are not around, take a break and wait. Signs can make telling images particularly when there is an interesting human element in the composition. I thought this shot was special, mainly because of where it was - Longreach, a central outback Queensland town which is about as un-Californian as any town could be. Looking at the local fashion it seemed that no one was taking the bait [135/200 mm, f11].

Hanging about - Taking it slowly with minimal equipment helps you to work without stress and fuss, particularly when you're working with people in the outback who have rarely, if ever, been photographed before. Within only a few minutes of my introduction to the men in a shearing shed, I was being ignored and was able to casually hang about making images, like this one of a gun shearer taking a nap [135/24 mm, f16, flash].