Apprentice

They start 'em young here.

Actually, today I took hundreds and it was very hard to choose. We caught a bus to Saquisili for the Thursday market (a real market, not a tourist market, so dozens of great shots there). There was a parade on also, I gather for the 60th anniversary of something, which involved what looked like every school child in Ecuador, plus the police and army. It went for three and a half hours. There were marching girls (from toddler size to big girls) drum and xylophone bands (also of every age), fabulous uniforms and a million opportunities for shots of cute children with no idea what they're doing... Then there were the buskers, the vendedoras and the faces in the crowd.
With all that to choose from, why the boot-black? Hard to say, but it's surprisingly hard to get a good boot-black shot and they're not usually this young, so...