Ok, so I’m walking to work this morning. In the line of cars driving down the road is a little silver car with a kinda cute guy behind the wheel. As the car passes me, the guy nonchalantly lifts a camera and takes a picture of me! Never slowing down, just lift and snap, and then he drives away. I’m standing there thinking…what was that about??
So I’ve formulated some theories as to what his motives were, both innocent and sinister:
Innocent:
-Hobby Photographer who likes taking random pics of people
-Photography student trying out different techniques
-Photojournalist looking for pictures of anonymous people for a story
-Artist who’s using miscellaneous photos for some kind of project
Sinister:
-Stalker who’s been tracking me and I don’t know it
-Serial killer staking out victims
-Guy who gets off on snapping pics of random chicks to go home and fap to
-Weirdo using pic of me to model his new face and/or body after
Which possibility do you think is most likely? Or do you have any other theories?
If it was one of these two, and the photographer is intending to publish the photos, they’re supposed to have you sign a release form (unless, of course, they blur your face out, or otherwise render you unrecognizable).
English (kind of South African) novelist Tom Sharpe takes photos of random people in the street to provide him with inspiration for his characters. Apparently he has thousands of candid photos of people getting about Cambridge.
Evan Hunter (probably better known as Ed Mc Bain) used photos of average people as chapter markers in Every Little Crook and Nanny, however I think (from memory) that they were mostly his friends.
What about the front man for the aliens, choosing a selection of persons to be abducted and probed in the near future? You missed the biggest worry, AFG.
I don’t think that’s true. If you’re in a public place, you don’t need anyone’s permission to take their picture. There’s no privacy rule in place on a public road.
A friend of mine is studying film at college right now, which got him into photography. When we hung out over the summer he brought his fancy Nikon camera with him everywhere and would nonchalantly snap pictures of absolutely anyone and anything. Kind of disturbing, really, but I’m assured that “it’s what photographers do”, and his pictures are pretty good, so there.
For practice. Most photogs need to shoot hundreds of yards of film before they can compose a picture properly. So, they’ll be taking a lot of pictures that they don’t expect to get any use out of, other than the practice.
I didn’t mean to imply that it’s an invasion of privacy just to snap someone’s picture in a public place, but it’s considered advisable to get permission to use someone’s image for commercial purposes. Just another of those cover-your-ass things.
