THE PHOTOS NOT TAKEN

[JamesT]

This may be of interest to some of our street photographers (and would-be street photographers).

https://www.35mmc.com/12/07/2018/photos-not-taken-frank-h-wu/

[FUJI]

What a well observed and written photographic essay James .....something to make many of us stop, a while, to ponder.

You all know that too never go anywhere without a camera, I am now known as....The man with a camera.....around our small town....rejections when they happen tend to hurt or to ruffle one’s feathers for a while, thankfully they are few and far between.....We usually part with apologies and a smile.

The only time I have been REALLY rattled was when I ...as an innocent 76 year old (then) enjoying his hobby in Coventry City Centre.....Why ?....I had innocently strayed into the...Big-Brother...NO-PHOTO’S zone of the ......West Orchard’s Shopping Centre.....with its walls if glass, high end conglomerates and dodgy looking security guards....This old man was surrounded then escorted out by three ...radio/pepper-spray/torch carrying uniformed heavies. No where are there notices forbidding photography, and it doesn’t bother them if one is taking ....selfies...or...sillies...on a mobile phone.....but a REAL camera is a No-No. Apparently, according to a tv program this Shopping Centre had some of the most sophisticated cctv equipment ever...cameras able to read, a newspaper a passer-by far below is carrying.

This means that they deliberately targeted me, and totally ruined my day, upset me very deeply, so that I didn’t return to the birthplace if my mother for three years....My grandparent,s and Coventry ancestors worked in the famous Watch-Making area...Spon-End.....and my Dad was away for 6 years helping to fight a war....we live just 5 miles from that CityCentre once devastated by nazi bombs....I still meet up with the once terrified little girl, evacuated to our house ...she is 85 yrs old now.

That kind of rejection...goes deep....very deep indeed......I have recently begun to return to the city....I deliberately tease those spy cameras, by venturing as close as possible with my longest lens attached, to point it within...from just without....

We Street Photographers suffer for our Art.

FUJI