Street Photography - Ever been confronted?

I've been doing street for many years... it used to be called 'candid' in those days and my favourite camera was a Mamiya C330 used at waist level which made you pretty much unnoticed, unlike today's DSLR. IMHO it pays to stand off from your subject and use a 70-200 (or equivalent) zoom lens. By standing off a bit most people rarely notice you, and on the few occasions that people have looked at me a bit cross I smile shrug my shoulders and point at the camera as if to say 'didn't mean to get you in the frame'. It works for me, anyway!

I've only ever had one close call which was many years ago with a particularly dull security guard. I was standing on a 'A' road waiting for the evening sun (I was shooting K25 colour slide at the time) to light up the side of a warehouse that was being built in the field opposite when a small van pulled up beside me and a minimum-wage security type employed to look after the building site jumped out and asked me what I thought I was doing. "Minding my own bloody business" I cheerily replied, to which he took offence. After some increasingly heated discussion about who thought who was a tw4t he jumped in the van and disappeared, so all ended well there. As luck would have it the pictures, when I got them back from Kodak, were predictably rubbish.

Rob
 
Barryboy said:
I've only ever had one close call which was many years ago with a particularly dull security guard. I was standing on a 'A' road waiting for the evening sun (I was shooting K25 colour slide at the time) to light up the side of a warehouse that was being built in the field opposite when a small van pulled up beside me and a minimum-wage security type employed to look after the building site jumped out and asked me what I thought I was doing. "Minding my own bloody business" I cheerily replied, to which he took offence. After some increasingly heated discussion about who thought who was a tw4t he jumped in the van and disappeared, so all ended well there. As luck would have it the pictures, when I got them back from Kodak, were predictably rubbish. Rob
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I had a very similar problem with security last year in the US. Sunset on steaming chimney stacks from the main road. A security guard came out of his hut staring at me. I went over to ask what the problem was, and he said if I took pictures someone might call the police. I said "right, no problem" and left in the car. 5 mins later I could see a cop car following me. After a while It was blue and red lights and "Pull over" on the loud hailer. They checked everything out and said "well, you can't be too sure. What with terrorists and everything" and let me go. I asked if I could take his picture. And he said yes. Which was lucky as my original sunset pictures were pretty dull.

P3070060-Detroits Finest by ianp5a, on Flickr
 
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Only ever had one person confront me. I had took a photo of a town centre and a few minutes later some woman with her boyfriend and kid came up to me asking why i was taking photos of her kid and was i some kind of pervert. Told her i hadn't and she said she had seen me do it. I looked back at my photos with her and most had been of older buildings and a church. We found the image she was on, and i had to zoom in to see what she was on about. She was about 50 yards away getting money out of a cash machine. The picture was crap and her boyfriend said that it was obvious to him i hadn't took one of them but she wouldn't have it. I said if she wanted i could delete it as it made no difference to me but she wanted to take it further. To cut a long story short, we ended up at the local cop shop and explained everything, they looked at the image and told her to stop wasting police time and to apologise to me.
 
I will try anything to get the shot I want, I have even been known to stalk someone in order to get the shot
 
Keith W said:
I will try anything to get the shot I want, I have even been known to stalk someone in order to get the shot
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I've ran ahead of people looking for a good background to shoot them against :D and waiting for them to cross my view
 
Never mind being confronted by strangers, I was walking through Dublin a few weeks back, trying to take interesting shots of people and my wife asked me what I was doing !:eek:
 
jimgallaher said:
Never mind being confronted by strangers, I was walking through Dublin a few weeks back, trying to take interesting shots of people and my wife asked me what I was doing !:eek:
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Or they walk right in front of your shot,then say "what" when you give then that look :runaway:
 
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