I’m a street photographer, which means I capture candid moments on the streets of the world. These moments can be anything that unfolds in front of my camera, if I see something funny, sad, meaningful I’ll try and capture it. Seeing these moments isn’t easy and when I capture something that gets my heart racing, I want to share it with the world.
A while back I captured a ladies short dress blowing up revealing her bottom to the people of London, I was already framing up a photo as her friend was kneeling down tying her shoes, I thought this in itself would make a good photo and before my eyes, a gust of wind blow-by and up went her dress. Here is the photo:
I posted this photo on my instagram and within an hour it had over 300 likes and lots of comments, mixed in with the positive were lots of negative comments which started to get nasty, I was also receiving lots of messages from people telling me that I was disgusting and how dare I take a photo like this and I should be ashamed of myself. I started to get upset, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the moment I had captured, it’s not like I was lying on the floor trying to get a photo of her bottom. I will say that if you could’ve seen the lady's face I wouldn’t have shared it, as I don’t want to embarrass someone that I don’t know, that’s not what I’m about. The 2 ladies saw me take the photo and one asked if I got it, I said yes and they both laughed. I also showed them the photo and asked if they wanted a copy, they themselves had no problem with me or the photo.
Before moving on I would like to ask the following question: What about if it was a Scottish man wearing a Kilt, would that be up-skirting or just a funny moment? Please comment below
As I started to defend the photo I had captured I started to get threats from people demanding I remove and delete it, now I should say that normally I wouldn’t take the photo down and I’d just delete the comments and move on, but I live in a small backward town and most of the people that started to threaten me know I like to relax in my local Starbucks and the last thing I wanted was someone coming into Starbucks causing a scene so I removed the photo, something that I wasn’t happy about doing. I understand if you don’t like the photo for whatever reason, but why must people push their political views on me, say you don’t like it for whatever reason and move on, don’t start threatening me or telling me what I should or should not be doing especially when you don’t understand what street photography is all about.
I don’t understand why these keyboard warriors, that ain’t interested in photography and have no idea what street photography is all about feel the need to comment and in turn, become nasty about my work, I just don’t see what pleasure they can get from this.
2020 has given too many free hours for these warriors to hunt and its allowed them time to spread their negativity around the digital world, we have so much negativity in our normal everyday lives this year that what the world could do with is people being positive and instead of spreading hatred they should be focused on being friendlier and more welcoming, or am I just being naive in my way of thinking, don’t answer that I already know I’m being naive.
I understand that everyone is not going to like all of my photos and I’m more than ok with this, in fact, I’d prefer people to be honest with me but let's leave out the negative crap out I don’t need it and it’s doesn’t make you look good and it certainly doesn’t make me feel good.
This has led me to question what is street photography and what does that mean today, I’ll give my thoughts on it in a future blog.