On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 05:50:45PM -0600, William Robb wrote: > On 20/07/2011 2:02 PM, Ann Sanfedele wrote: > > > > > >Like Christine , I feel uncomfortable shooting the unfortunate and while > >that photo of Shel's is powerful it is also maudlin (skipping around to > >referencing other posts here - sorry) and cruel. > > > > I'm going to challenge you on that one Ann. Lets presume for the > sake of discussion that the story under the picture is true (and I > have no reason to believe otherwise, and neither should you). > With that in mind, the subject new the camera was present, and I > expect new he was being photographed. Without going back and > looking, I believe Shel mentioned he had shot most of a roll of film > on that subject. > So, the subject was knowingly being photographed in what had > unfortunately become his natural environment. > I'll agree with the maudlin part, but cruel? > There had to have been at least a tacit approval on the subject's > part regarding the image being shot, and one would presume that had > he objected, the image wouldn't have been made (though this would > depend entirely on how sensitive Shel was that day).
I've shot with Shel on a couple of occasions, and I don't think I would ever believe him to be anything but considerate of his subjects at any time. He had a degree of involvement that I personally could never achieve - I'm always self-conscious about the differences in our situations (for one thing, I'm shooting with camera gear that cost thousands of dollars, while many homeless people wonder where the price of the next meal is coming from). But the one thing I have learned is that the trick is to get to the situation where your subject knows you are there, but doesn't have a problem with that. In my (rather different) experience I managed to achieve the same sort of separation with Ashley Judd at an IndyCar race. When she first saw me point a camera at her I could see all the defensive walls go up. But when she realised that my main purpose was to photograph Dario Franchitti, and she was only of interest as Dario's girlfriend (as she then was), she relaxed. (Paul Newman was the same way; he was happy to be photographed as a team owner, but wouldn't sign autographs as a celebrity) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
