Today, a guy
looked so furiously at me while I was taking this photograph.
The reason I took
it was I thought it looked like a ‘Bring Your Kids to Work Day’, but he clearly
didn’t like not knowing the reason why I was taking it; he looked from me to
the cones then back at me again as if I was weird, or at the very least like
needed to justify my intentions; it’s the kind of face I’ve grown to expect
after years of taking random pictures to use for material, and an expression I
could really do with removing from my life.
The point is, I
shouldn’t have to explain what I’m doing to anyone in this situation, unless
what I’m doing is intrusive on inappropriate. When I do this sort of thing, I’m
always discreet, but that doesn’t stop people from having a really long hard
good look at the subject of my photographs, without any attempt to hide their
confusion; I thought British people were supposed to be polite and go out of
our way not to make a scene, yet I’ve seldom seen this in practice; in my
experience, the people who catch me taking photos of random inanimate objects
want to make it absolutely clear that they don’t understand what I’m doing,
without any attempt to disguise their incredulity; it’s a bizarre and boring
never-ending situation I find myself in.
It reminds me of
the time I was walking through town with my umbrella up, because it had just
been tipping down, but was starting to settle. Little did I realise, but it had
basically stopped, but this didn’t prevent a woman from walking past me,
staring at me like I was some scum.
“It’s isn't raining
now”, she said, with a degree of fury that completely outweighed the situation,
as if she were the one who should decide when I have my umbrella out, and if
she wasn’t happy with it, it should stop there and then.
I wasn’t aware I
had to run these things past people first; sometimes, I hate the
public.