PEOPLE PICTURES

I’ve met people who insist they don’t want their picture taken, but I’ve never actually met people who thought the camera was robbing them of some of their soul or spirit. I’ve heard stories about that, but I’ve never personally known it. I don’t always ask if I may take a picture. I admit that I’ve sometimes felt as if I were intruding, and I sometimes feel a bit sneaky when I take a picture of someone who doesn’t know it’s happening. Permission isn't expected at ball games and school events; and when people are out in public outrageously dressed or made up, I assume they are fair game for photographers.

I especially like to take portraits when I know the subject trusts me. It is especially satisfying to photograph a person who doesn’t put on a cheesy smile. Sometimes it seems “right” to get the picture with the subject looking away from the camera, but some of the most arresting portraits are those with the subject looking directly into the lens.

A photograph or a painting is never the same experience for two different people. Each person brings his background of living to it. Inferences come both from the image itself and from the person’s own experience of life. As a photographer, I try to imply nothing. My most memorable experiences in museums have been those when I didn’t try to figure out what the artists were trying to say. Attitude is universal and individual.People underwater and in the air are as hard to "get" as fish and birds, but when it happens just right, the result can be interesting.Portraits are the most challenging of all people photographs because the subject sometimes expects a result that the photographer doesn't have in mind at all when he is aiming the camera. Children are wonderful to photograph because they have no expectations, unless an adult has said, "smile."
I used a 300 mm lens to get the guy painting an electrical tower on our hillside, and the other guy was cutting limbs from the eucalyptus tree behind our house. They are laborers, but they have the skill, grace and nerve that performers must have.I've had shocked responses to the photograph below. It seems sinister to someone who is fully aware that terrorism is a frightening reality in our world, particularly since the World Trade Center attack, the War in Iraq, and school shootings. I particularly like it because I know the person in the stealth combat gear is actually not a soldier at all but thirteen-year-old Jeremy and the gun is a toy. I have no idea what's going on here, but I was intrigued by the guy carrying a life-size, home-made puppet dressed to match himself. He was moving along the edge of the street at a celebration in the Little Italy district of San Diego. He was obviously not part of another group. He was completely out of context.The following photographs are whatever you want them to be.