Originally posted by sealonsf 
I'm curious though, do you feel comfortable taking pictures of people? How do they react? I feel uncomfortable taking pictures of people when I'm traveling - I'll only do it if I ask them first and I don't do that very often.
Do you tip them? (Especially people like the children at the dumps?) Ask them? Or just fire away?
I've gotten over the uncomfortable-ness I think. I've only been photographing for a few years but I think it's something I have slowly gotten over by doing a lot of street photography. I also recently did some press work, and you really have to get in people's faces for that, which was also a learning experience which helped deal with it I think. Although then you can fall back on your press pass.
There's definitely all kinds of moral questions about someone with a flash camera turning up and taking photos of people in extreme poverty etc. I think the good outweighs the bad. It's a real question in a lot of photojournalism, is the photographer exploiting the people who are suffering? They are making a living out of it, but I think most photographers are driven by altruistic reasons. It's important for people to see things.
There are certainly some things you can do though. The kids at the dump live by collecting recycling to sell, so I took a bag of my empty water bottles, and an old pair of shoes (some are in bare feet amongst broken glass and discarded needles).
Throughout Vietnam, Cambodia etc I was asked quite a bit for money for photos. Personally, I never gave any. I occasionally asked people if a photo was OK, but 99% just shoot it.
Giving money, in my opinion, is OK but creates a cycle where people start expecting cash for photos. If they let you into their house or something I would, but if it's on the street I just shoot and move on. Maybe that;s partly because for press stuff it';s definitely a no-go (although I think it happens quite a lot). There were also a lot of kids who will do anything, like help you with your bags etc for money. Every book I read said don't pay them, they're mostly being used, and payment creates the system whereby it can continue. Tough to deal with though when you're comparatively so wealthy. My view is that there are ways you can help that are better then handing out cash to people in the street.
I didn't ask the kids at the dump for permission. They mostly ignored me or seemed content with me wandering about shooting. A more selfish reason for not handing out money is that then you're going to be hounded, which is sad but true. If they saw me give a kid a dollar, every kid would've been following me the whole time.
The other tough one was shooting monks etc praying. I think capturing these kinds of things is really good, but you don't want to be really disrespectful. I Did shoot stuff like that, I just tried to be very quiet and not get in anyones way.
Post #1 by CWyatt
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