My wife had noticed a man following us about 25 feet back. He seemed nice enough and was wearing a suit jacket, occasionally he spoke into a radio. We asked our guide who he was; he said a policeman who was a friend of his, hired to watch our backs for pickpockets and keep the more aggressive street vendors from swarming us.
In addition to our guide, and the rear-guard, there was another man whose sole job seemed to be watching me and my photo selection. I had taken a photo of a woman, most likely Muslim, sitting in the street selling vegetables and apparently this was not a good thing. We were in Tetouan, at the Souk or Sunday market, in Morocco.
The tiny alleys were impossibly narrow and dark and I imagined that if we had no escort this whole thing might go quite differently. At one point I went to take a picture of a man in a shoe repair/ cobbler type of store which appeared to have been inherited from his great grandfather. It was a crevice maybe six feet wide and filled with old leather and tools with the man’s lined face barely visible in back, this was the scene I came so far for. He saw me photographing him however, and making an angry noise, he came after me!
Should I shoot that shot? Sometimes I wonder. Am I being rude, am I intruding, do I have any rights in this photographic interlude that I travelled so far and paid so much money to achieve?
Ethics in photography gets a lot of play now in terms of talking about digital manipulation of images, what is real and what is photo-shopped fake? Also talk of “staged” news story images, and the meanings and context possibly being changed, are debated. Nature photography is concerned with disturbing animals that may be endangered. Here however, I am speaking of taking pictures of people, in their natural surroundings, for my own pleasure and use while traveling.
I wouldn’t mind asking for a release or even paying for a shot of people on a foreign street or going to Sunday market in Morocco but it just takes so much time. After a tedious negotiation I am usually rewarded with a posed “touristy” picture that I wanted to avoid in the first place. For me the ideal is to photograph people in their natural surroundings living life undisturbed and unaware, therein lies the problem. If they knew they were being photographed would they object? If they don’t know and they are not interfered with, is it OK? I mean no harm and simply want to capture my wonderful adventure to share with friends and family for the most part. So do I have that right?
Oftentimes, in situations where I want to be incognito, I will use the flip-out 360 degree LCD screen to make it appear I am doing, or looking at, something else other than my subject. Also, sometimes with a smaller camera I might set the timer and put the camera on a table out of the way and out of mind, to capture an image. When the camera is up to my face and aimed right at someone, it can be quite intimidating. People certainly wonder; what is he doing, what does he want with me? This is true whether in Seattle or across the world.
Each situation is different and some are hard to decipher. My personal guide tried to steer me by saying “ah… this is a nice picture”, and pointing, he thought helpfully, at one of his standard kitsch scenes. I tried to be nice and show interest and occasionally snapped the shutter.
In this way we seemed to balance in a ying-yang of privacy and perceived decorum against my eye’s hunger for the exotic and spicy marketplace images I wanted to burn in my memory, for the rest of my life.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Top Ten Things I Hate
The Top-Ten list of things I Hate…..
1. Huge four wheel drive tucks for commuting: Nothing says “god I am afraid of being perceived as non-masculine” like driving around an enormous gas sucking monster to merely haul your beer-belly ass to work. Bonus demerits for duallies, quad cab with long beds (the 35 footers), and super high wind-shear rigs. They should all have bumper stickers that say “every time I romp on the gas I kill another Marine”. As long as these idiots, who never haul anything, never tow anything, drive these abortions to work every day the price of gas is way too low.
2. Little pregnant dresses for chicks: I am sure you have seen them; women wear them as shirts/tops, often over jeans. The bodice is tight and then they poof out little small dresses for obese girls. I cannot figure out the attraction for any woman to ever wear one. All they do is look unflattering and make even a skinny girl look overweight. I can only assume these hideous apparitions are “comfortable” any time something astoundingly inappropriate (such as grey sweat pants) are worn in public it is announced “they are comfortable”. Of course this is just another way of stating “I am lazy”. I don’t mow my yard because it is “more comfortable”. Similar in way to how older women cut their hair Prince Valiant/Dyke short and then announce, “It is easy to care for”.
3. Costco: Yes, I realize if you are running an orphanage they have cheaper food. If you want to wander around the aisles dodging carts the size of Fiats and then wait in lines the length of a Disneyland holiday weekend nightmare, this is your baby. You can take your huge four-wheel drive and burn your five-dollar a gallon gas to go into town and fight through this mess to save small prices, how grand. People get there before the store opens on Saturday anticipating the crushing rush. The membership card is the final insult to injury. (Yes this is tongue in cheek, since I don’t shop there it has little affect on me).
4. Republicans that still support Bush: It is one of the funniest things I have ever seen to watch these tunnel-vision morons try vainly to say Bush was still a good president, that he was “good for the country”. Some have even said they wished they could vote for him again. The most amusing is he has screwed these people the hardest, (see 1). The damage that Bush has done is irreparable; no one will ever again trust the United State’s motives. He hasn’t just destroyed the US economy but our perception in the world as a leader, a country that was on the moral high ground. Can we say we are any better than the USSR or Communist China in regards to human rights? Imprisoning people, executions, people arrested without charges, and torture? No, not any more.
5. Applelites: These are the strange birds that have somehow been brainwashed to believe that their lives should be devoted to turning every person they meet into Apple computer zombies. They spread the word like electronic “Johnny Appleseed’s”, screaming about new Apple products, or the Apple store or some damn Apple thing ad-naseum. In trying to think of a comparison it is difficult. Mormons come to mind but their conversions are all about money and power. Amway comes to mind but that is money again. Possibly Vegans are a good comparison. Militant fucks out to meddle and change the world to their twisted view because they are so lonely, bored and unhappy. Applelites constantly cite statistics about their increasing share. This is only for the US; the rest of the world sees no point in paying triple-price to join the Apple Elite.
6. Wallmart: Wallmart is lionized in most business papers for their innovative business techniques. This is like praising Hitler for modernizing Germany. Wallmart represents and maximizes everything bad about American business; offloading, cheapness, screwing their employees, destroying small business, hiring illegal workers, disobeying labor laws, nothing is too low or underhanded for the Wallmart billionaires, the Walton’s, America’s new robber barons. They literally have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Sadly, many people are forced to shop there. Once they drive out of business all the businesses that historically served many small towns, nothing is left. They are the maggots of retail.
7. People supporting illegal Mexicans/Immigrants: These people say that if they were not here no one would do the work they do. This is both dumb and racist. It says basically these Mexicans will also gleefully do the menial labor jobs never aspiring to move up the socio-economic ladder, nonsense. America is already overcrowded and having a huge wave of illegal workers to drive down wages helps no one but the already wealthy, the Wallmarts, and people who want to use and abuse these workers who have no legal recourse for fighting labor abuses.
8. One issue voters: These wunderkinds have ruined the middleclass of the United States of America. For the privilege of being against abortions and supporting the NRA they elect snobbish oil whores like Georgie “Herbert Hoover” Bush; who has bankrupted the US, made us much less safe, convinced the rest of the world to despise us, and of course enabled even China to openly laugh at us if we bring up human rights ever again. How did it get to this? That people can’t realize what is really important to them and their families…the bread and butter issues? They have been brainwashed by special interest groups and thankfully the Catholic Church leads the charge into their own special stupid hateful tiny world.
9. The Catholic Church: Easily, hands down, the single most evil institution in the history of the world. You might say what about the Nazis? They only lasted about eight years and killed off a few million. The Roman Empire? They only lasted 1000 years and did provide some good influences in law, engineering etc. The Catholic Church is 2000 years old and still making people miserable all around the world today. They have been responsible for the torture and murder of entire nations, entire genetic ethnic groups gone, because of them. When having the historical opportunities to stand up against despots like Hitler, they climb in bed with them instead, and always have. When they ran Europe for 1000 years it was known as the “dark ages” due to their never ending battle against knowledge, science and art. They are the bottom of the bottom, their meanness and combativeness has been responsible for many, many of the worlds wars sice their inception.
10. The Police: It is very hard to tell what the police forces of the US think their true purpose is but it is certainly not to serve and protect the public. It seems to be collecting revenue and solidifying their power base. They brag about driving up the price of street drugs which we all know just increases violent crime. Certain religious groups being militant by nature, such as the Mormons, are taking over certain branches of the state police such as the FBI. How does this help us? It doesn’t. What a bizarre state of affairs and yet we cannot do anything against them or we will be cutting the publics safety and be deemed unpatriotic to boot!
1. Huge four wheel drive tucks for commuting: Nothing says “god I am afraid of being perceived as non-masculine” like driving around an enormous gas sucking monster to merely haul your beer-belly ass to work. Bonus demerits for duallies, quad cab with long beds (the 35 footers), and super high wind-shear rigs. They should all have bumper stickers that say “every time I romp on the gas I kill another Marine”. As long as these idiots, who never haul anything, never tow anything, drive these abortions to work every day the price of gas is way too low.
2. Little pregnant dresses for chicks: I am sure you have seen them; women wear them as shirts/tops, often over jeans. The bodice is tight and then they poof out little small dresses for obese girls. I cannot figure out the attraction for any woman to ever wear one. All they do is look unflattering and make even a skinny girl look overweight. I can only assume these hideous apparitions are “comfortable” any time something astoundingly inappropriate (such as grey sweat pants) are worn in public it is announced “they are comfortable”. Of course this is just another way of stating “I am lazy”. I don’t mow my yard because it is “more comfortable”. Similar in way to how older women cut their hair Prince Valiant/Dyke short and then announce, “It is easy to care for”.
3. Costco: Yes, I realize if you are running an orphanage they have cheaper food. If you want to wander around the aisles dodging carts the size of Fiats and then wait in lines the length of a Disneyland holiday weekend nightmare, this is your baby. You can take your huge four-wheel drive and burn your five-dollar a gallon gas to go into town and fight through this mess to save small prices, how grand. People get there before the store opens on Saturday anticipating the crushing rush. The membership card is the final insult to injury. (Yes this is tongue in cheek, since I don’t shop there it has little affect on me).
4. Republicans that still support Bush: It is one of the funniest things I have ever seen to watch these tunnel-vision morons try vainly to say Bush was still a good president, that he was “good for the country”. Some have even said they wished they could vote for him again. The most amusing is he has screwed these people the hardest, (see 1). The damage that Bush has done is irreparable; no one will ever again trust the United State’s motives. He hasn’t just destroyed the US economy but our perception in the world as a leader, a country that was on the moral high ground. Can we say we are any better than the USSR or Communist China in regards to human rights? Imprisoning people, executions, people arrested without charges, and torture? No, not any more.
5. Applelites: These are the strange birds that have somehow been brainwashed to believe that their lives should be devoted to turning every person they meet into Apple computer zombies. They spread the word like electronic “Johnny Appleseed’s”, screaming about new Apple products, or the Apple store or some damn Apple thing ad-naseum. In trying to think of a comparison it is difficult. Mormons come to mind but their conversions are all about money and power. Amway comes to mind but that is money again. Possibly Vegans are a good comparison. Militant fucks out to meddle and change the world to their twisted view because they are so lonely, bored and unhappy. Applelites constantly cite statistics about their increasing share. This is only for the US; the rest of the world sees no point in paying triple-price to join the Apple Elite.
6. Wallmart: Wallmart is lionized in most business papers for their innovative business techniques. This is like praising Hitler for modernizing Germany. Wallmart represents and maximizes everything bad about American business; offloading, cheapness, screwing their employees, destroying small business, hiring illegal workers, disobeying labor laws, nothing is too low or underhanded for the Wallmart billionaires, the Walton’s, America’s new robber barons. They literally have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Sadly, many people are forced to shop there. Once they drive out of business all the businesses that historically served many small towns, nothing is left. They are the maggots of retail.
7. People supporting illegal Mexicans/Immigrants: These people say that if they were not here no one would do the work they do. This is both dumb and racist. It says basically these Mexicans will also gleefully do the menial labor jobs never aspiring to move up the socio-economic ladder, nonsense. America is already overcrowded and having a huge wave of illegal workers to drive down wages helps no one but the already wealthy, the Wallmarts, and people who want to use and abuse these workers who have no legal recourse for fighting labor abuses.
8. One issue voters: These wunderkinds have ruined the middleclass of the United States of America. For the privilege of being against abortions and supporting the NRA they elect snobbish oil whores like Georgie “Herbert Hoover” Bush; who has bankrupted the US, made us much less safe, convinced the rest of the world to despise us, and of course enabled even China to openly laugh at us if we bring up human rights ever again. How did it get to this? That people can’t realize what is really important to them and their families…the bread and butter issues? They have been brainwashed by special interest groups and thankfully the Catholic Church leads the charge into their own special stupid hateful tiny world.
9. The Catholic Church: Easily, hands down, the single most evil institution in the history of the world. You might say what about the Nazis? They only lasted about eight years and killed off a few million. The Roman Empire? They only lasted 1000 years and did provide some good influences in law, engineering etc. The Catholic Church is 2000 years old and still making people miserable all around the world today. They have been responsible for the torture and murder of entire nations, entire genetic ethnic groups gone, because of them. When having the historical opportunities to stand up against despots like Hitler, they climb in bed with them instead, and always have. When they ran Europe for 1000 years it was known as the “dark ages” due to their never ending battle against knowledge, science and art. They are the bottom of the bottom, their meanness and combativeness has been responsible for many, many of the worlds wars sice their inception.
10. The Police: It is very hard to tell what the police forces of the US think their true purpose is but it is certainly not to serve and protect the public. It seems to be collecting revenue and solidifying their power base. They brag about driving up the price of street drugs which we all know just increases violent crime. Certain religious groups being militant by nature, such as the Mormons, are taking over certain branches of the state police such as the FBI. How does this help us? It doesn’t. What a bizarre state of affairs and yet we cannot do anything against them or we will be cutting the publics safety and be deemed unpatriotic to boot!
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