The 100 Strangers Project is usally done by photographers. The two goals are to help overcome social anxiety while also getting better at taking portraits spontaneously. In general, the people you include in the project must be people you've never met before, spoken to before or interacted with before. I don't have a camera at the moment so most of my focus is the overcoming social anxiety part. You can read more about that in my diary if you'd like. I am thinking about getting a camera for this. If anyone has any reccomendations please feel free to email me or leave a comment in my guestbook. I have an old Nikon Coolpix but haven't had time to get it working yet.
For more info from photagraphers who have completed the project please visit any of the following.
100 Strangers of Nicola Bernardi.
100 Strangers of Carlos Chavez
100 Strangers group on Flickr
I talked to my first stranger today. He had long black untamed hair along with a matching beard. A bit like one of the disciples of Jesus. After being at the gym for a while to take out my anger at the world, I saw someone who I thought was cool. I went over and said “hi” as he was walking on the treadmill. I gave him a compliment on the tattoos covering his arms and how many pullups he did earlier. He has been working as a personal trainer since 2023 and will be working at the new Crunch Fitness location in Bolingbrook when it opens next week. I was nervous at first and it took at least 20 minutes of thinking about it before I went up to him, but I’m very glad I did. Regret at not doing something hurts much more than a bad reaction from someone else.
My second stranger was Emma. We met by accident on New Year’s Day as she was trying to get in touch with someone after New Year’s Eve. We laughed at our chance encounter and ended up talking a bit about pizza. She mentioned she was hoping to invite a friend over for angus beef pizza tonight and as someone who's spent lot's of time in Chicago I chimed in how much I like deep dish pizza as well. I told her I was working on the 100 strangers project, and she found it very interesting, agreeing to be a part of it.