BELFAST - Last Thursday, Alexandra Chapin took her dog to the beach. She also took her camera in hopes of collecting portraits for her Facebook page Humans of Belfast.

Chapin started the project in the second week of April and has been adding around five photos a day. The images are usually of individual people, often posing, but there are also snapshots, group pictures and the occasional nontraditional "portrait" — a tattooed arm, a pair of brightly-colored knit pants.

Humans of Belfast takes its name and basic premise from a photo blog by New York City-based photographer Brian Stanton called "Humans of New York."

Stanton started in project in 2010 to, in his words, "construct a photographic census of New York City." Three years later, he's amassed some 5,000 photos and close to a million followers between Facebook and Tumblr.

The site has also spawned at least 40 spin-offs on Facebook including Humans of Tehran, Humans of Vanuatu, and closer to home, Humans of Portland, Maine.

"I was looking at these other ones," Chapin said, "and I thought: I can do that, and I don't mind approaching people and asking to take their picture."

Belfast may be the smallest region to have its own "Humans" page, and the size of the city turns out to have a strange effect on the formula.

Where Humans of New York draws on the diversity and relative anonymity of city dwellers — the individual faces that comprise the faceless crowd; the shared experience of people who might not share a single check box on a federal census form — for its documentary snapshot of the human condition, Humans of Belfast can't help but be a catalog of friends and neighbors.

Chapin, who often knows the subjects of her photographs personally or knows something about them, is well aware of this. 

"I think of it as a photo album for Belfast," she said. "It's meant to be fun. I want people to like their pictures."

Standing in Heritage Park on Thursday, she thought out loud about whether to ask a girl she knew to pose with her friends. She did, and showed them several versions of the photo to get their impressions, then took one more for good measure.

Walking up Main Street, she paused to glance at a man getting out of his car, then kept walking. "I'd ask him, but I already took his picture," she said. 

Chapin said she's not opposed to taking someone's picture twice, but doesn't want to appear to have favorites either.

The portraits appear in chronological order on Facebook. Unlike Humans of New York, there are no captions. She also doesn't include names — something she attributes to her work in health care, a field in which privacy goes without saying.

At the Army Navy Store, she photographed the two men working at the counter. In passing, she mentioned that she wouldn't include their names or the location of the photo. One of the men laughed. "Everyone will know where it is," he said.

If you live in Belfast, chances are good you'll see a number of familiar faces on Humans of Belfast and the "Likes" have come rolling in accordingly. Local celebrities like the UPS driver get tons of them. Where a Humans of New York follower might give a thumbs up to something sympathetic seen in the image of a stranger, followers of Humans of Belfast seem to be saying: I like that actual person.

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Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com