"So ... were you taking my picture?" asked the Staples employee, who in his turn was taking a cigarette break. "No," I lied, in my best British accent, trying to sound as though taking tourist pictures was an everyday act at the eastern end of Santa Monica Boulevard - "I was taking a picture of the door." Which was, in a way, true - although the potential for having real live human beings so close to graffiti reading "This is being human" was too good to pass up.
For this reason I have mostly stopped taking pictures of people unless I have been asked, or unless it is so crowded and full of other camera wielders that people aren't likely to mind. But then I miss out on some really fun shots. I suppose I could work on not minding the occasional scolding and menacing that people photography occasionally affords.
ReplyDeleteI have a few rules: I don't openly take pictures that I think will be truly intrusive; I don't take pictures if I think it could be dangerous - well, not usually; I don't take pictures that someone might interpret as me putting them in danger (say - someone who might be an illegal immigrant); I don't use flash. If in doubt, I pretend I'm checking email on my iPhone, and use that. In this case, however, I had a zoom lens on an SLR on me - which is kind of obvious.
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