I've been talking for a long time about the challenge of photographing strangers. Those of you who know me know that the one thing that I'm short on much of the time is self belief. I'd rather be insulted than complimented because normally I find compliments leave too much out (as Bert pointed out at the workshop recently "wow" isn't a constructive response – though it's still nice to have sometimes).

Anyway, today I finally put my money where my mouth is and went and shot some portraits in Lancaster. I set myself the goal of shooting five portraits in two hours and, whilst I missed that goal, I still got great shots of three fantastic people who were happy to allow me to intrude into their day:

My sincere thanks to (in order) Liam, Kara and Laurie (I hope I spelled your name right; I forgot to ask) for making my life easy and making me look like I know what I'm doing. You can see the full-sized photos here.

This has been a while in coming; I'm so glad I finally got here.