Photo thoughts 3 -- pictures of people

I wrote Saturday about how my favorite category of photos is those showing what people do to their surroundings. But that’s not my only area of interest.

I have always admired photos of people, but I rarely take them, except for the occasional family snapshot. That’s because I have a point-and-shoot camera, with a slow response time (by the time the shutter opens the person has already walked out of the frame) and until a week ago I had only a 3x zoom lens (I could rarely get close enough to somebody to shoot them unawares).

It has always seemed rude to take pictures of strangers, let along asking for trouble if somebody decides you’re a pedophile shooting kiddie porn at the playground. And it’s also borderline rude to post pictures of your friends on the internet, so I sometimes crop or blur on purpose (or sometimes not on purpose).

I like to take candids of people doing things. I think practically everything children do is photogenic. 

I like to take pictures of people taking pictures! Somehow if lots of other people have their cameras out, I don’t feel so intrusive with my own.

Now I have a 7x zoom on my new camera and suspect that people may start appearing more frequently. Here are a couple from last week.