The world is trash and you can’t trust anybody… until you’re all alone and you need your photo taken. 

Let me paint you a picture, or better yet, let me take you a photo. You’re standing outside of a theatre, of a play that shall not be named, talking to a friend who you haven’t seen since before Covid (name drop: it was Rhys Mathewson).  After you’re done manically telling your friend and their girlfriend about your very unique lockdown experience, you get a sense there is something hovering around you.

You see someone in your periphery, anxiously waiting to ask you a big question. In their hands, their phone is angled towards you. It dawns on you, you have been picked. This stranger has sensed your trustworthy aura will now bless you with ten magic words: “Excuse me, can you please take a photo for me?”

You may feel several emotions and reactions to this sudden blessing and task; immense joy – wow this person trusts you with their expensive phone which stores their whole life; a whisper of anxiety – what if you take bad photos? Then lashings of confidence-building adrenaline – you are a good photo taker actually, your friend used a photo you took as their LinkedIn profile. 

You must accept the calling by showing them that this favour they’ve asked of you is no favour at all. “Yes of course! Of course I can take your photo no worries!” Now you’re both smiling, the social contract has been signed. 

The brief: Take a photo. The objective: Take a photo good enough to be posted on social media and maybe even in the family group chat. The deliverables: 1-100,000 photos so the client has options. 

As you scout the location and familiarise yourself with their photo app, you realise you’re in luck this time: it’s not a group photo, it’s just a single person, just one talent to direct. 

You could be useless and just quickly snap two or three pictures and be done so you can go back to asking your friend’s girlfriend what high school she went to to find a common Kiwi connection.

Or you could be the greatest human being this person has met today and turn what might have been a simple photo into a whole photoshoot. The lighting, the framing, the angles (low angle pointing up from the ground is an underrated and under-utilised angle), these are all important but a good person-who-takes-photos-for-strangers knows the most crucial part of taking a decent pic is the amount of time you put into hyping the person up.

Are you telling them they look great? Are you bleating out a  “yesssssss, amaziiiiiiiing” at them every five seconds? Are you throwing outlandish compliments at them to get them to give a natural embarrassed giggle? Are you hiding their double chin? Do your arms burn? Are you squatting low to match their height? Have you done all of the above to make sure this beautiful, brave stranger is going to walk away with the best photos they’ve ever had taken?

After a few minutes it’s all over. There are no more angles to try, no more portrait to landscape to portrait manoeuvres you can do, it’s time to hand back the phone.

They thank you profusely and you tell them it was no problem at all. You turn around and go back to your friends, continuing the conversation like you didn’t just execute one of the greatest favours you can do for another person. It’s casual, it’s normal, no one else obsesses over it, you’re being cool.

You watch from the corner of your eye as they walk away, scrolling through the photos you took. They look satisfied. They happily pocket their phone and move on with their life never to see you again. You’re glowing because you helped a stranger tonight, but no good deed goes unpunished. You’ll never know what photo they chose to post.