All excellent points and well told. You're right, of course.
I'll re-read that and take it to heart.
keith
Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Hi Keith,
There are many ways to adjust the shadows without making the faces or other areas darker.
As for your comments about making the photo, well, the situation wasn't
quite like my approaching them and asking for and taking a pic. My GF and
I were there for a while, talking, chatting, enjoying the sunshine, and
then I made a few pics. I don't "intrude" where I'm not wanted. These
fellows had no problem with our being there. We were just walking by, said
hello, commented on the nice day and the conversation went from there. IOW, we were welcomed to spend time with them. Carol, my GF, ended up
chatting with one of the fellows for quite a while, and, in fact, when we
went to leave a couple of them suggested that we come back again, which
Carol did, by herself, a couple of days later while I was occupied with
something else a few streets over.
The idea that one must follow a certain protocol when photographing people on the street is such crap. People are people, and most like to engage in conversation and passing the time of day. As a person (not as a photographer) I have to understand where I'm welcome and where I'm not. To just arbitrarily avoid any situation where one *might not* be welcome is foolish. To *intrude*, of course, is just as foolish. If you were walking down your street, in your neighborhood, and came across a couple of well-dressed people standing around talking, would you not say hello as you passed by? Might you not reply to a response? Have you never passed the time of day with a stranger, perhaps someone waiting for a bus, or shared a table at a busy restaurant with someone you didn't know? Like I said, people are people, and we were just being human.
Shel
