Ethics?

[nealjpage]

act as if you are hiding behind your camera.

But I'm a lot bigger than my camera

 

[keller]

What determines if someone is "well-known"? If my name appears on the newspaper in the Academic Results section (everyone student's name appears there), would I fall under that category? Or is there an actual measure?

 

[cmptrdewd]

Here in the States, anytime you take a photograph you can legally use it for whatever you want, commercially or personally, with a few exceptions (i.e. child porn). Trust me, my dad is a cop and my uncle is a lawer.
Ethically, well that's up to you. For me, what they don't know won't hurt 'em. If you want to put a picture of a friend or family member online, you should always ask first.
I actually go out and take pictures and people ask me to take their picture!

 

[danalec99]

I've been pondering this for a while. What's the proper way to photograph strangers on the street candidly?

Would you have this issue if you were visiting, say Tokyo?

Be the tourist!

My preferred weapon would be a wide angle. The long zoomy would look threatening. But to each their own.

 

[panzershreck]

a good question is why do large cameras 'give' people anxiety?

i had the problem of being afraid to take public photos, still do to some extent although not as much as i used to...

but if given a small digital, or a compact 35, i'll go blitzing

hell, several weeks ago all my clothes were in the washer & dryer, it was in the low 60's on a saturday morning, and i felt like a burrito would be nice... so i walked down the street to a burrito place near the riverfront in downtown Chattanooga, across the street from the aquarium so there were tourists, in swimming trunks, sandles, a t-shirt, raggedy hair + my overgrown beard, and a dress jacket... but i didn't care despite having a million eyes looking at me...

 

[darin3200]

Big equipment is is seen as intimidating because in some senses cameras are a power sybmol of our culture. If you point at camera at someone and take their picture you are recreating their likeness and you are creating a comodity of that person.

Sontag said cameras were also like guns, a rangefinder probably a handgun, a camera with a 600mm a sniper rifle, a 10fps camera with a 200mm a machine gun. Granted she didn't make those comparisions, but after it became illegal to go big game hunting in Africa people took cameras instead of guns and "shot" the animals. Because they couldn't have the actual animal, a picture would do.