This is my favorite strangers photo, although taken back in 2004 so definitely not for the contest. While in China for the summer, I took a weekend trip with a running group to Chongming Island off the coast of Shanghai. Chongming is a farming island that no one would visit unless they had business there (or were looking for a cheap nearby place to run and get drunk in an empty hotel). I got up extra early on Sunday to walk around and take photos (with my old favorite Canon G3, which eventually died in a muddy ditch elsewhere in China). Needless to say, Chongming residents found a sole young white girl wandering around with a digital camera at 6:30 in the morning somewhat strange so I tried to use that to my advantage to take photos of people - essentially waiting until they approached me (although my Mandarin wasn't good enough at the time to understand their accented speech). The couple below lived in a tiny tiny concrete house in the middle of rice paddies - obviously the poorest of the poor. I wandered around taking scenery pictures forever, until finally I piqued their curiosity enough that they came outside to talk to me. They agreed to let me take their picture, standing very serious-like, but started laughing when I showed it to them on the back of the camera (they'd never seen that before) - and I quickly snapped another one - which turned out much better than the first
