I was at Arches National Park taking pictures along the Devil's Garden Trail (a very popular spot), when a whole busload of retired folks from a tour bus came up the path. One elderly man paused to watch me focus and meter, then stepped up and said "You must take very beautiful pictures, since you have such wonderful equipment!"
Ah, if only it were true...
When I'm out in public, I'm always asked my some young couple, "can you take our picture?" while I was out with my wife for an anniversary dinner, I mentioned to her, "Gee, no camera. I won't be asked to take anyone's picture." To our amazement, about 5 minutes later, an asian couple handed me their point & shoot and asked the classic question.
Even without a camera, I must have the look of a photographer about me:
At a trip to the local waterpark with my family, I was standing in the middle of a pool of water with my older daughter (no cmaera in hand). A woman waded up to us, handed me her disposable waterproof camera & asked me to take a picture of her & her child.
It's a family joke now, whose going to ask Daddy to take their picture? (Just for reference, I don't wear camera logo clothing.)
I was shooting a hockey game for a daily newspaper. It was something like Junior B and I arrived with a few seconds left in the first period so I got to chill my bones through the intermission.
A spectator came over and asked. "Are your pictures going in the [cities other daily newspaper and my competitor]?" "No, sorry but I'm with [my paper]." "Well is one of their photographer's here?" "Nope, sorry I don't see anyone."
So then this guy just starts to chew ME out. "Why the hell aren't they covering this?" I kept saying, "It isn't US. It's THEM" but he kept on insisting that we all worked for the same paper. It was kind of fun since he was getting more and more pissed off and he never could get his head around all of this! I can only imagine what he yelled at the refs!
Non-photographer pokes his head up under the darkcloth to see what I'm up to.... "It's in color!!"
I was in New Orleans carrying my 35mm camera, making pictures of people in a square. There was a gang of children running around and they began pleading with me to let them make some pictures. I figured ?why not??, and started passing the camera around to the kids. Some didn?t look through the viewfinder, didn?t focus or compose, just started clicking and pointing the camera at their friends. They were smiling, happy to have the opportunity to try something new. When they finished making their pictures they allowed me to make some photographs of them.
When I returned to Chicago I developed the film and was surprised to see that that the pictures they had made were far more interesting and creative than my own efforts. I guess the lesson for me is to try not to think so much while making a photograph, have a lot of fun, and keep a smile on my face.
If you want to see an example of one of the kid?s photographs, I posted it at :
http://www.prairienet.org/~jwebb66/jackson.htm
Not to break up the flow of funny comments, but in case you all haven't checked out Chris Jordan's web site, here it is:
http://www.chrisjordanphoto.com/
I lived in the Pacific North West for several years and "Seattle street studies" is just stunning.
Ha-- what a great bunch of anecdotes! My favorites were Walter's "spirit level" story and Rob's "Bridges of Madison County." What a hoot! Dang, this thread should be made into a magazine article or something. Or maybe a book, along with everyone's funniest photos.
Speaking of which, maybe that's a good new thread. My funniest was a self-portrait on a mountain summit in the Cascades with my Nikon. Timer set to 10 sec, I ran across a 30-foot section of icy snow to pose majestically with the sea-of-peaks behind me. As I sprinted toward my chosen spot, I slipped exactly as the shutter clicked. Photo: me flailingly suspended sideways in mid-air immediately prior to snowy face plant...
I found this ancient thread, and thought I'd add to it.
While photographing Portland, Oregon from the Burnside Bridge with my 1939 Deardorff V8, a young man stopped to gawk and talk. It was two in the morning, and I was a little wary, but he turned out to be just someone on his way home. We talked about the camera, and about the film, and the lack of internal metering, but I could see that he was still a bit puzzled. Finally, he asked, "Where's the display?"
--Gary
i was in france last summer ...
on a winding side streets leaning up against
the corner of an old building, and waiting for a college girl to
walk by so she wouldn't be in the view .
i pressed the shutter, and she came up to me ..
i said, no need to worry, you weren't in the picture
she looked at me with big eyes, and said
that's a camera ?! what a hallucination!
I was out on the Antietam battlefield, setting up the Canham 5x7 to take a photo of a split-rail fence. A young family walked up, full of curiosity. I let everyone take a peek under the darkcloth. The mother of the brood turned and exclaimed to her husband, who had not yet looked, "It's like Hi-Def TV!"
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