tebop opened this issue on May 11, 2007 · 23 posts
XENOPHONZ posted Sat, 12 May 2007 at 12:44 PM
Some people get really upset about having their pictures taken. I've gotten that reaction several times in public. For example, I once took photos at an "airplane pull" event for my company. Several companies were competing against each other to assemble teams of employees and have them pull a 737 jet with a rope across a tarmac.
At one point, I was shooting pictures of the airplane & the people around it from a good distance, so I was using a 300mm telephoto lens. I snapped a series of photographs. When I was done, I took the camera away from my eye and noticed a man nearby in the crowd giving me a poisonous look. At first I was confused by this, until I realized that I had been shooting pictures while aiming over and past his adolescent daughter -- the girl was standing slightly in front of me. Apparently, he'd gotten the idea that I was photographing his daughter, and not the aircraft beyond her. It would have been tough to photograph someone who was standing 5 feet away with a fully-extended 300mm lens which wasn't even pointed at her -- but he didn't seem to realize that.
shrug Nothin' happened beyond a dirty look. But such are the risks which you accept these days when you are taking photographs in public.
I've also had others react negatively in similar situations. Most all of them were just people who were extremely paranoid about having their pictures taken: for any reason or under any circumstances. I've even known people who got very upset about having their picture taken at a family birthday party or picnic -- by their own relatives.
But there's one thing which all of these people are all failing to realize: and that is in today's world -- at least in western nations -- your picture gets taken all of the time, everywhere you go. You just aren't conciously aware of it. Those cameras located in the dark domes in the ceiling of the clothing store aren't just there for show. Neither are the cameras in the ATM machines, or the cameras in the parking lots and on the streets. Privacy is a thing of the past. And it's getting worse............