Friday, November 13, 2009

"Oh, don't take a photo!"

I’m finally taking a stand.

 

I hate, hate, HATE people who:

 

1.   A) flinch away, or try to block their face with their hand when you try to take a photo

 

-or-

 

2.   B) people who, upon seeing a perfectly fine-looking photo of themselves that you just took, will exclaim “Oh, God! I look ugly/fat/stupid! Delete that!”

 

Seriously, I’m over it.

 

As someone who takes a lot of pictures (nearly 4000 this year alone), nothing frustrates me more. This is especially bad when I’m trying to take a candid photo to actually capture a funny or interesting moment that I feel would make a good and well-composed picture. That candid photo is ruined when the person becomes a cringing blur as they exhibit behaviour A. Yes, I know that everyone’s image is their own business and that I shouldn’t be taking photos without permission, but come ON. Behaviour B seemed to be more of the ingrained body-conscious insecurity that’s drilled into people (of which I myself am an occasional victim) in which we must automatically downplay ourselves as ugly for fear of being considered arrogant and conceited (or worse, actually believe that we are unattractive and dismiss ourselves out of hand).

 

In any case, it comes down to this:

 

1.   I am a photographer and therefore (for better or worse) am an artist (of some sort).

2.   The pictures I compose and attempt to compose (for better or worse), are art (of some sort).

3.   Therefore, the people and objects in the picture (for better or worse), are part of that art (of some sort) and are worthy/interesting.

4.   Therefore, shut your face about it. I think you look good/interesting in this photos and that’s that.

 

These thoughts were kicked into action by a farewell I was at last night, and two friends of whom I took a candid photo of two people I know sitting by a wall and laughing at what a person standing nearby had said. The candid photo was natural and looked great. They then noticed I was taking photos and got quite embarrassed saying “Oh, delete that, I’m sure it looked terrible.” Despite having not seen the photo. I tried to downplay the situation by saying “Well, if you don’t want me to take a bad photo, let me take a good one.” (my mantra of sorts), and they posed. Then viewed the picture. “I look terrible in that one,” one said. “Take another.” They posed again. Repeat times 5. In the end, I just walked away. When I looked at the results, the two best-focused and best-looking photos were the first two I’d taken. Also, after putting the photos on Facebook, I got a narky comment about the candid one, stating “When did you take this, how dare you, I’m going to kill you when I see you next OMG.”

 

I can’t win. Frankly, I miss my old camera-phone, where you could take a picture without making a shutter sound, so people wouldn’t know (though, the camera was no good, and I know they auto-enabled the noise to stop locker-room shots and such).

 

So yes, if you’re one of the people like Craig and Stevie and Ted, of whom I can take many many photos and just love the attention, then I salute you.

 

 

Lucas Brown | Proxy Champignon
Master of Brainthinking

 

3 comments:

dooga said...

I think part of the reason why I tend to get narky with people when those sort of shots are taken is that 1) they happen largely at inopportune moments or 2) happen during one of my more extreme body-face-self hate phases, so any photos of me are viewed through a prism of insecurity. I can't speak for anyone else, and I know you mentioned those in your post, but sometimes no matter what you do, you are always going to come up against that sort of thing.

Now, I also understand your compulsion to document things that interest you, and I have thousands of photos I have taken with my camera phones through the years of moments that make me smile or help me remember a person or an event, and these are largely off- the - cuff spontaneous moments where the subjects are unaware I was taking a picture. Usually my phone goes straight back in my pocket after I snap the pic to make the people feel more at ease, because I also know that having a camera in someone's face when they're unaware of it can cause unnecessary drama...

Taqwa said...

I don't love the attention, I've just realised there's no effective way to stop you doing it, so I no longer bother. Hence the usually narrowed-eyed expressions :P

Electric Chikken said...

I hate having my picture taken. I can't stand humans looking at me, let alone a machine doing the same :-D

I'd just rather make it an interesting photo than one of my mug being all blurry and flinchy and half-turned-away. All photographic evidence of my mother is of the back of her head, for example, which looks stupid. I realised that when I was much younger, and from that point on, I decided to just deal with it and let people have their dumb pictures. Bam!