A little while back while in the middle of a stock photography photoshoot in Sydney, I was approached by a man who can best be described as a boofhead (rugby league jumper, overweight, long very greasy hair, etc). At first I didn’t catch what he said to me and had to ask him to repeat himself. The second time I heard him clearly but was surprised and asked him to say it a third time. His aggressively toned question was, “Did you just take a photo of my daughter?”.
The rest of the conversation went like this:
Me: “No, and why would I want to?”
Him: “Well I heard your machine there going and you had better not be taking photos of my daughter. So what were you taking photos of.”
Me: “This bloke, he’s a model”, as I pointed to the subject of my photography. Then I made a quick comment along the lines of ‘it’s a public place and I can take photos of whatever I want’ and walked away. No use arguing with an idiot, all you get is two idiots.
The thing that irritated me most about this guy was how I was clearly taking photos in that spot and he brought his daughter over and deliberately stood smack bang in my background – and then accused me of doing something he thought was sinister.
Because of attitudes like this and increasing bureaucratic restrictions on photographers, there is going to be a rally in Sydney at 10.00am on Sunday August 29th at Campbells Cove. I can’t get to the rally, but if you can more details can be found here.