Of Women and Men

Pardon the unoriginal wordplay on the famous novel title... :)

I've noticed a (worrying?) trend in my stangers project. I realised that I mainly notice and photograph women. Granted, I'm not far in, but there's only one male in the series so far, and he only came about because I photographed a girl he was with first. I don't often notice men whose photos I'd be interested in taking, to be honest... actually, never in my life have I really noticed men on the street, or the looks of men in general. Sure, I've had a couple of celebrity crushes over the years, who hasn't (Heath Ledger is still my knight in shining armour, well, he could be any time he wanted anyway) but apart from that I've never cared much about looks, muscles and what have you that other women apparently do. Men don't tend to be interested in fashion either, so that doesn't leave a lot of things that could get a guy noticed by me in the street. There are exceptions of course, but most of the time I see many more women who look interesting than men. I'm not especially fashionable myself because I prefer to blend in with the crowd instead of standing out, even if in a good way, but that's not to say I don't notice and appreciate others' efforts. Quite the contrary - I've actually been thinking, what if I moulded this project a bit into something different - a street fashion series perhaps, because I simply love seeing stylish people out and about. After some consideration I decided I didn't want to place constraints on myself regarding the type of person I can photograph for it, so I rejected that idea, but my instincts tell me there will be many more stylish ladies in this series than men. 

I'm a bit wary of approaching men anyway, I don't want them to think I'm hitting on them, with the additional potential embarrassment of a male when it comes to photos. For some reason, in my observation, it can be considered 'gay' for men to pose for photos, or God forbid be complimented on their style... I don't think I'll ever get my head around this, but guys don't like taking photos that much, and I don't want to burden myself with rejection. Maybe when I'm well into the project I'll change my mind and develop a 'what the hell' mentality, but not just yet.