I was taking photographs of this guy for a couple of minutes before he noticed me: it was busy, and I was on the opposite side of a pedestrianised area, so I wasn't immediately obvious to him. When he did notice me he put his arm in front of his face and stayed that way until I walked over to him. He explained that he didn't want his picture in the local paper, because he'd been photographed by them before and hadn't liked what they'd written. When I explained that I wasn't with the paper he relaxed, and we chatted for a while.

In the meanwhile, the people who would normally walk past and ignore him, continued to walk past; ignoring both of us – at least that's what they wanted us to think.

On a technical note: this is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image constructed from a single RAW file - the normal exposure, another, 1.2 stops overexposed, and the final one overexposed by 2.4 stops. I wanted to bring back some detail in the shadow areas of the shot and to level off the detail in the texture of his clothes.