Keeping an open mind

One thing that I always try and do when I travel is to be as non-judgemental and un-biased as I can. When you're brought up in a certain part of the world, in a certain way, it's very easy to dismiss any other way of doing things as being weird.

In suburban Melbourne, Australia you don't often run into guys slinging machine guns with dead agoutis on the handle of their bikes! So when you do you've got to get over the icky factory and take a photo.

I speak very little French but managed to explain to them that I liked their dead rat and could I take a photo. One thing led to another and pretty soon I had a portrait session going.

After a couple of photos the left hand guy pulled out a little piece of alfoil with something wrapped in it. Now in my part of the world that usually equates to some kind of powder that's highly illegal and pretty bad for you. In this part of the world it was shavings of gold he had panned out of a river and was going in to town to see if he could sell.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that what seemed perfectly natural and ordinary to him, was out of this world strange to me. So in the back of my mind I have to think that this is perfectly ordinary and natural and just keep on photographing. But part of me is still freaking out at the dead thing hanging from the handlebars!