I feel worried, too, about this... I'm must say I almost never do street photography partly because of this, and I'm extra careful in crowded areas.
Even in desert areas, one can encounter the issue, though! I was once shooting lizards in a (almost) desert park with my 80-320 (damn big telephoto lenses!). I hadn't noticed people in the line of sight about 50 or 100m away. They noticed me and ran at me yelling that I was not allowed to take photos of them. I'd have liked to explain that they were probably not in the frame, and even so they would be way out of focus, but they didn't get my lizards story and were obviously not in a mood to listen to my demonstrations (or to anything at all...). As they were getting pretty aggressive, and I was alone, therefore outnumbered, my best option was to mumble some apology and to get away, glad that they didn't insist to get the film, some money or whatever... Most people do not care about being photographed, some are very willing to participate, and then it's a real pleasure, but the few who are hostile to the concept (for their own good reasons I won't challenge) can sometimes become really nasty. Patrice Vic Mortelmans a écrit : > Hi, > > This forum has discussed legal objections to street photography many > times. When I do street photograpy, it's not that often that I really > take a frame on individual people, so I don't really bother about that. > If people are in the picture, they're mostly unaware and part of a crowd > or passing by at some distance. Moreover, I'm an amateur and don't > publish photographs, so I don't see any problem in that area. > > Today I was at a public street community fair (kind of garage sail) > taking some pictures. Again: not framing individual people, but just > catching the environment. Since we live in a multi-cultural city, I > happened to frame a sale stand where a family of muslim people was > looking around. One of the women directly signaled me that she opposed > to have a picture taken. I know that this is forbidden by the islam religon. > > I have a dual feeling about this. > > On the one hand, I can fully understand people to oppose to being > photographed, be it for religious reasons, privicy reason or economical > reaons (if the pictures are commercialized), or whatever. That's the > main reason why I'm not in to street photography with direct contact to > the subject; I know the risk that the reaction is negative and having > arguments or even a row would make me loose the pleasure of taking > pictures. > > On the other hand, I feel uncomfertable that a couple of muslim people > mingling in a crowd can prohibit me to take pictures. What if I would > have been photographing my 2 year old son running around through the > street and they happened to be in the background... Strictly spoken, > that would have objected them as well, I guess. They're just part of a > crowd. > > And I also have a third thought about this (but I hope I don't start a > polemic discussion on this). I'm myself a practicing roman catholic, so > I (think I) know what religion is about. Nevertheless, I can't imagine > to interact with other people in my city community in this defensive (*) > manner, based on my religious practice. But maybe I'm a bad catholic... > > Anyway, this is my (little) story... I'd like to hear some reaction to > that! Maybe this forum numbers some muslim photographers? That would be > really interesting! > > Groeten, > > Vic > > (*) note: I put the woman's reaction as being defensive, implying that I > was the one to be offensive, starting to take the picture. That's just > fair for the sake of the discussion. > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
