RE: [Leica] What I did today

[Paul Chefurka <Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com>]

> > Anthony, you're not trying hard enough to get outside your own head
> > and inside those of the people around you.  In their minds, the
> > scenario goes like this:
<snip ugly scenario>
> 
> Everything except the first event is imaginary.  Does this 
> tell you anything?

I'm not saying their fears are reasonable or justified.  I'm saying the
fears exist, and giving you an example of the kinds of scenarios that
fearful people build in their minds.  You don't get to be a successful
people photographer by ignoring the mindset of your subjects.  It doesn't
matter to the fearful parent that the scenario is low-probability to the
point of absurdity.  It is sufficient that it is the worst thing they can
imagine.  By the same token, it doesn't matter to me that their fears are
unjustified.  It is sufficient that they have those fears, and if I am a
decent human being I will either not excited those fears, or will try to
allay them after the fact.

> > Here in Canada a very good 14-year-old gymnast named Allison
> > Parrot went to meet a "press photographer" who telephoned her
> > asking for a photo shoot.
> 
> What does that have to do with a person photographing a child 
> in public?  If he
> had posed as, say, a doctor, would all doctors thereafter be suspect?

In point of fact, yes they would.  There's good reason why male doctors in
North America will no longer give physical exams to a woman without a female
nurse in the room.

> By feeding their paranoia, you intensify it.  If people feel 
> that photographers
> are all closet perverts, then the only way to change that is 
> to show them that
> they aren't.  And that won't happen if you are afraid to even 
> go outside with
> the camera, lest someone be offended or frightened by your 
> deadly lens.

Don't be deliberately obtuse, Anthony.  Nobody's suggesting that we refrain
from taking our cameras out in public.  All I'm saying is that we have to be
conscious of the psychological ocean we're swimming in.  I agree that the
best defense is a good offense in this case, and that the more photographers
get out there and expose themselves to the public (sorry, couldn't resist)
the more the public will come to accept the innocuousness of our art.

Paul Chefurka