Part 2: People unaware

Here we go again on the portraiture experience. I think I’ll find this part a little easier than the first, because I’ll be more anonymous in this section – unless I get attacked of course! I prefer to work in the background, so this may be more up my street. There’s not an expectation by a subject to produce a quality portrait, so no one to answer to, so less pressure.

There are still mixed emotions to face:

· Voyeurism – it seems that in some circumstances I’d be the unseen viewer of what should be an intimate situation, and that doesn’t seem morally right to me.

· Taking people’s photographs without prior permission can lead to ill feeling and in some tribes / religions it’s unthinkable – this can be particularly difficult when photographing children (mainly due to too much media hype), but also with people in other countries. For instance, when in Kenya I was asked not to photograph some of the locals as they considered that taking their image took part of the person. It’s also considered by some religions that women should not be seen, never mind photographed.

So I’ll have to take situations as they come and try not to get into too much bother!

There are some events coming up over the next few weeks which will lend themselves to this part, so I’m anticipating that I’ll be taking less time to complete the next assignment. This is the height of the tourist season with Whitby Regatta weekend coming up, which runs straight into the Folk Week then closely followed by the village agricultural shows – so lots of opportunities to be used. Because of the number of events which are due in the next few weeks I may take some of the exercises out of sequence – it would be a shame to miss their potential.