On Oct 26, 2005, at 7:23 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Seeing these pics from the SF outing has led me to a thought. I believe it's easier to take pictures of people in public places when you're accompanied by at least one other photographer. To oversimplify and exaggerate: Being part of a group taking photos means you're on a photo outing or you're doing this for some particular reason, therefore you're not just a pervert:-). Seriously, at least as part of a group you have the psychological support of others being intrusive right along with you. Perhaps it wouldn't work that way for everyone. But I find that it works that way for me.
I guess I'm one of the folks for which it goes the other way. When I'm with a group of photographers, I'm more interested in interacting with them which kills my concentration on seeing photographs. I enjoy the interaction, but I don't get many pictures that do it for me.
When I'm alone, I interact with my subject matter, with my senses, and get a lot more useful work done. For instance, last Friday I spent the afternoon and evening wandering in the neighborhood of the de Young Museum. A non-photographer friend joined me for a couple of hours, my boyfriend joined me for dinner. We talked about this and that, and I made 130 exposures from when I arrived to when I went home. I worked alone most of the time, neither has much to say about photography. There are probably twice as many, or more, photos I like from that set than from the Norcal PDML gathering set, even though I made more than twice as many exposures that Saturday.
Godfrey
