Earlier today I was walking from a friend's house to my bank, about a mile away. It's a straight walk down one main street. It was a perfect day to practice exposures with the isrDS. I photographed mostly junk - just subjects that had interesting or tricky lighting - a car half in half out of shadow, signs, flowers, and so on. My back has been bothering me, and this was the first long walk I've taken in a while. Every couple of blocks I'd sit on a fire hydrant to relax the muscles.
About 3/4 the way into the walk a police cruiser pulled up along side me, and out steps a sergeant. He politely asked what I was doing and I said - not mentioning anything about photographing - that I was out for a stroll. He asked about the camera and I told him it was my new digi, and I was just making a few random shots to get used to it. I asked if he wanted to see the pics, and I also asked why he was interested in my camera. He said that someone had called in a complaint about me - seems I was walking past a school (a high school) and decided that was a good place to sit and rest. He was concerned that I might have been taking pictures of children. As it happened, I only had two pix of kids on the card - one of a few guys sitting in the shadow of a wall and another of a few girls running towards me. These were all high school aged kids .... He didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with those, thanked me for being cooperative and friendly (after running my info through their system), and suggested I be careful when using a camera near children. We talked a little - he really didn't want to hang around too long - and he told me that the world has changed radically since I started photographing back in 1967. I guess it has ... <sigh> Shel
