This woman works on a sugarcane farm near Pakse. She is making molds for candies produced from the sugarcane she grows, harvests, and cooks. I call this a working portrait – my subject is well aware of my presence. In fact, I showed her many of my images as I made them, and she was quite pleased to see herself pictured in this manner. Yet she is also working. She was wiring candy molds together as I photographed her. Our visit to this farm was quite brief – probably about 15 minutes or so. I choose her as my subject because of her animation and degree of activity. She moved from cooking sugar to making molds to taking care of her baby, showing many different aspects and degrees of working activity. My photographic approach to this woman reminded of me of my own youth, when I worked as corporate photojournalist at a large insurance company. I would follow an executive over the course of a morning with my camera, trying to express on film how he approached his work. I found myself doing the same thing here, within a smaller time frame, and with a Laotian candy-maker instead of a New York insurance executive. And now I use only digital cameras, which allow me to know exactly what I’ve been able to express, and share the results with the subject herself.