I Love Your Face

"Mi piace la tua el faccia"

Cheat sheet

I have been a photographer my whole adult life. I have photographed thousands of people. I have found it so easy and fulfilling to photograph children, but adults are usually a little trickier. However I am always confident that I will get the shot. Part of the reason is that I have mad connecting-with-other-people skills. I really do. But one of the ways I am able to make a connection with someone is by talking with them.  

When I first landed in Italy, I instantly fell in love a hundred times before I even left the airport. But not with another person, necessarily but with the language tumbling off their tongues, with their fashionable outfits, with their architecture, with their laid back rules, with their appreciation of everything beautiful, with their food, drink, way of life and their FACES. 

I knew right away that my first sentence I needed to learn was going to be, "I love your face".

Fast forward to a beautiful afternoon in Pisa, my eyes bulging from the beauty, my jaw dragging on the ground, my words not even coming out right in English because I was so speechless by the things I was seeing. I was focusing my camera down a spectacular street across from the tower to get this shot:

Then I noticed the two guys waving at me in the doorway, so of course I had to go make friends. Before I knew it a group of them had gathered in the door and I needed to tell them that I loved their faces!

   Luckily one of them spoke a little English and translated my sentence for me while the others flirted and surely thought I was a crazy American girl while I photographed them. 
And so I learned my only Italian sentence:
"Mi Piace la tua el faccia".

And another thing I learned was:
Adults love to hear that you love their face. 
Every person who heard those words from me beamed. They laughed at my poorly pronounced Italian, they blushed a little, got a sparkle in their eye and I got the shot. 

Here are some of my favorite faces from my journey:

  And one more thing that I learned from speaking 
my new sentence: 
I need to keep using it. I want to continue to see into the faces that I pass in the street or interact with during the day. I want them to know that I love their face. I want to give them the same smile and sparkle in their eye and a little boost of love to carry them on their way.
Hey you: 
I love your face.
Pass it on...

quote of the day:

“His dress told her nothing, but his face told her things which she was glad to know".

A.A. Milne