When I'm travelling around, I like to take pictures. I almost always go for monument and landscape shots, but I have to remind myself to go for people. I feel funny taking people pictures. Usually the kids don't mind at all. As a matter of fact, they will often mug for the camera, and beg you to take thier pictures.This is an example of a girl and a couple of boys doing just that yesterday in Samarkand. It was actually hard to get the shot. They kept jumping around, putting devils horns on each other, pushing one out of the way as they moved to the front, and all that. I could not get them to pose with the bike. And then, after you take their picture, you show them what you got on the monitor. (How did we do things before digital cameras?)
I always feel awkward taking adult pictures. After all, I don't like it when people take my picture when I am just out in public. (Or, come to think of it, at virtually any time.) And my experience is that people in general share that feeling.
Now, I am talking about more than the nice peacekeepers the Chinese had provided on every streetcorner in Urumchi----who asked several times that I not take any pictures--sometimes while displaying firearms. (And that is too bad, because once, about two minutes after I got told not to take pictures, there came rolling down the street real slowly a convoy of six trucks stuffed with boys in uniform, riot gear hanging in the truck, the lead truck with a big sound system saying something like "Have a nice Day." or something!--Would have been a cool movie to show you all).
The first butcher I tried to capture (chopping on a legbone with a really big axe!!!) in Xian made it perfectly clear with waving hands (not the axe!) and such that he did not want his picture taken. However, since then, I have had several people, adults as well as children, mug especially for the camera. This kinda defeated the purpose of getting a candid, but it was interesting. Just walking around the market I have had people do special things when they saw I had a camera, and wave and smile, and indicate that they wanted to see monitor review of the pic. Even old women, and men dressed up in local garb, and all that. And I have tried to grab a lot of pictures with a longish zoom. But, while the scene might have been interesting in person, I could not successfully capture it, since I refused to stick that big old camera up to my face and concentrate on taking the picture. I have tried to rush the shots, before the people told me to get lost, and I have not gotten anything good. As a matter of fact, I would guess that what is keeping me from taking better people candids is my own feeling about the issue--not the people's.
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