Villefranche,
France 9
As you know, I enjoy making candid photographs of people. I am a little more hesitant these days because it is hard to predict peoples' reactions to being photographed, especially in different countries with different cultures. Most of the time people don't even see me. If they do, they will usually smile. Occasionally, someone asks why I am taking pictures and I offer to send them a copy and give them my card. On other occasions, I approach the person and tell s/he that they are in a photo I just took and give them a card. First I offer to send them a copy of the picture, then I ask their permission to use it on the Internet on my website or my Photo of the Day.
I can only remember two instances in which people got mad at me for taking photos.. One day while driving along a rural road I saw an older gentleman sawing off a fence post with an old bucksaw. With a red barn in the background, it was a nearly perfect scene for a photograph. He looked up when I stopped and pointed my camera, then started shaking his fist and cursing ... I left without the photo I had imagined.
Another time I stopped to make a photo of an interesting house and continued on. When I drove back a man stood in the middle of the road and came up to me. I could see that he was very upset about something. He demanded to know why I was taking pictures of his property. I explained that I was a photographer and shot photos of houses everywhere I went. When I gave him my business card and showed him the pictures on the camera, he calmed down a bit.
I've mentioned these incidents to encourage you to ask yourselves if you would have taken the photos with people in them - people you don't even know. I ask you to do it not only the for the people photos taken in Villefranche, but in other destinations as well.
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