One of my favorite ways of taking pictures of people: waiting until they no longer notice the camera.

In some cases, this is easy. The natural excitement of the moment may cause people to not even notice that someone is present with a camera. Aside from such events, however, getting people to relax and ignore the camera can prove to be as much of an art as making the images once they've forgotten about the camera.

Rangefinder cameras help this. They are generally smaller than SLRs, and tend to make less noise (largely because there is no mirror popping up for the exposure and dropping back afterwards). They also have the added advantage of allowing the photographer to see the image at the moment the shutter opens. Notwithstanding that I've used SLRs for more than a quarter century, the rangefinder camera occupies a place in my heart.

This is a good example. I was walking through an Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel, with a man who had grown up there but no longer lived there. He was trying to show me the neighborhood bakery. At one point, we ran into this local who upon seeing my cameras started to walk the other way. When the man I was with struck up a conversation regarding the location of the neighborhood bakery, the local stopped for a smoke and a chat. During the chat, the local became comfortable enough that he didn't notice me with my Leica snapping pictures of him, including this impromptu portrait.