Taking photos of strangers

http://www.thestar.com/travel/article/636379

During your travels anywhere, do you occasionally chose to take photos of a stranger, just because they looked interesting to you, etc.?

I tend to take photos where stranger(s) are part of an event, a whole picture composition (to give it a human dimension/comparison against a natural or man-made landscape) or the 'stranger' is clearly a performer or worker (ie. in a shop) doing something.

Have not yet asked any stranger because they looked 'interesting' to pose for a photo shot.

Maybe I just have a different focus around me in my travels and want to remember trips differently. 'Course maybe I haven't travelled broadly enough and haven't seen "exotic" enough looking people?

Check out the 100 Strangers project. I've been lazy and only shot 2 strangers so far, but that would be a great excuse to take stranger photos when traveling.

Sometimes I shoot from the hip.
I took this photo without aiming
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...ishHipster.jpg
After, he said "did you just take my picture?"
I played stupid and said "I'm not sure" like I didn't know how to work the camera.
He continued on his way, probably cursing tourists.

He was just too interesting to let get away.

Oh my! How could I forget this one?
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/b...analHoneys.jpg
Although I didn't ask permission, they knew I was taking their photograph.

My niece was recently the subject of unwanted photos taken by strangers, and lots of them. She's four, and blonde and adorable, and busloads of tourists started making her the focus of their photos while she was in transit between Tromso and Oslo. They thought that she looked like a typical Norwegian girl, and there she was in Bergen looking all local colorish, so they gathered around taking her picture, and when she retreated to her pile of luggage with her blanket to try to get a break, they thought this was even cuter and really closed in. My sister tried to protect her as best she could, but there's only so much you can do when you're faced with the tourist paparazzi. Not one person thought to ask if it was o.k. to take her picture, and they didn't speak any of the same languages that my sister speaks, so getting them to back off was next to impossible.

The joke of all of this, of course, is that my niece doesn't have a drop of Norwegian blood in her. She was born and raised in Virginia and is of Scotch-Irish ancestry, so these tourists are all going to go home with bunches of pictures of an American tourist.

At any rate, from the way my sister described it, it was invasive for the whole family and scary for my niece.

Sarah

Zen, you got a live action shot of a hipster! I'll bet he has a fixie at home.

Pam

In my mind he's an Amish hipster :D

Taking photos of a child who is not yours without permission is just wrong verging on creepy.

I can't recall that I have myself other than some really cool performers at Fisherman's wharf. DH did take a picture of an woman walking in Red River, NM. We both felt very weird doing it but she looked like the so called "mountain people" and we were in the mountains. We just haven't shared the photo, but it did remind us of a funny night walking in the cool mountain air.

I personally can be very weirded out by strangers so I try not to be weirding anyone out. I would probably ask if I had the nerve.

I sometimes take photos of strangers - I tend to try to do it surreptitiously and in a non-creepy way.

There's times when I'd really like to take photos of a child, but I generally don't unless I'm far away & it's not obvious what I'm doing, because that's just creepy.

I took these today of some girls running on the beach near my kayak:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_WfCe0A3iU1c/Si...2/IMGP4228.JPG

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_WfCe0A3iU1c/Si...2/IMGP4234.JPG

Where is that water?

I ask and most people say yes. It does detract from the spontaneity of the compostion -- you get more posed and less candid outcomes, but it feels more honest.

I've always been bothered by that famous shot of the woman with the green eyes on the cover of National Geographic -- was she from Iraq? -- my thought being that she probably made nothing from that picture. I'd guess the photographer made enough to buy a house or send a kid to college.

One time I shot a father and son in a red canoe about 100 feet below me in a river. I shouted down to them for their address, and I sent them a copy of the shot. About two years later a neighbor introduced me to the father and he told me how grateful he was for the picture, that he has it hanging on the wall of his office.

Once I took my neighbor Priscilla's picture with her dog, Rudy. I hardly knew Priscilla at the time.

Just a few weeks later, on the fourth of July, Rudy got a heart attack and died from the stress of hearing all the fireworks in our neighborhood. The poor dog was indoors with his owners, but the noise was too much for him. The picture I took was the only one Priscilla had of herself with Rudy.

Last summer, the movie, "Public Enemies", starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale was shot in Chicago and other locations in the midwest. I got close-up pix of quite a few of the extras one night in downtown Chicago.

There were a dozen or so 1930's cars in the film, and I also took pictures of some of them. The owners of the cars actually drive their cars in the movie.

One of the car owners asked me to send him my photos, and because they were night shots they didn't turn out too well. So, I called him and managed to get on the movie set again during the day for a few more pictures, which I sent to him. He sent me a kind note of thanks.

"Public Enemies" will be released June 30 and it will be interesting for me to see which cars and extras I photographed will actually be visible in the movie.

By the way, I did get to see Johnny Depp, but not close enough or long enough for a picture.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zen

Where is that water?

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Chesapeake Bay - I paddled out to Thomas Point lighthouse.

Let me know if you wanna be bored by 80 photos of the front of my boat in water.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OnTerryOh

I've always been bothered by that famous shot of the woman with the green eyes on the cover of National Geographic -- was she from Iraq? -- my thought being that she probably made nothing from that picture. I'd guess the photographer made enough to buy a house or send a kid to college.

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Sharbat Gula. Afghan woman in a refugee camp in Pakistan.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...irl/index-text

I am also very shy (ETA: Not shy in general but about taking people's pictures.) but I do try to avoid taking photos of people without asking. (I lost many good opportunities.)

One issue in Vancouver, pre-Winter Olympics (in early 2010) is all the attention that the Downtown Eastside gets. It's basically a place with a lot of drug addicts, some street prostitution, and a lot of people having a really hard time in life. It's the poorest postal code in Canada. And journalists are pouring there from all over the world to take pictures of the homeless. There's a good side to it (exposing a problem) but now there are women's groups educating the women who work on the street about their rights and how to turn away journalists. Just because they are prostitutes doesn't take away their right to control their image.

Thanks, Grog.

When I was 28 I went on a spur-of-the moment, nothing-reserved-except-for-the-flight-trip to San Patricio Melaque and Barra de Navidad (near Manzanillo).

I wanted the total non-gringo experience so where I went, I had to rely on my pathetic Spanish. There were some stark scenes of poverty (and pure joy when children were playing) and wanted to capture those images.

Some of the more blatant ones I asked for permission (pointing at my camera and at the person) and they always said yes. If I find time I'll scan them.