Things you cannot photograph

Pitxu said:
Because I'm interested in different cultures and their differing ethics, could you explain why you wouldn't take pics of crying people at a funeral?
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...I would feel very obtrusive to someone going through such a hard moment with my camera there, especially given that my interest would be objective...sort of "...I feel your pain...don't move, the light is hitting you just right!..."
Just a pesonal comfort level more than anything I guess.
 
raid said:
Pitxu,
I guess, he implies that tears at a wedding are tears of joy whereas tears at a funeral are tears of pain and sorrow.
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Exactly. I also feel that a wedding is an event you want to share with others, whereas a funeral is an even you HAVE to share with others. More private..to me anyway.
 
This past weekend we were at a farm, Inn, thing... relaxing.

As we walked down past the pigs, we saw that one sow was giving birth, and had kicked one of the piglets down into the clay mud by the lake front. It was stuck, and drowning.

KT and I scaled the fence, waded into the lake (around the electrified fence sections) pulled the piglet out of danger and placed it up on high ground.

I know it's a small thing - the life of a pig is much less than the life of a man - but I was proud that when I was in a position to act or observe, I chose to act without thinking about it.

Obviously if I was unable to help directly (if it would have made things worse, or unduly endangered others, etc.), then photographing would have been an option again.
 
bmattock said:
Yes, it did. Here it was known as the "Mourning Portrait" and was popular during the heyday of the daguerreotype, roughly ending prior to 1900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography
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Do you suppose that would even be legal now? I mean, dead people have no rights, and are legally property, so would there be any legal bar to someone doing that? I can't think of anything offhand that the authorities could charge you with, but making up a body and propping it up in a chair for photos would offend so many sensibilities these days that they would surely try to find something.
 
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I wonder if it's still not used in some villages in southern Italy...
Taking a photo a dead relative woudn't stop me, because it's a relative. But the one who took the photo of dead President François Mitterand in 1995 (with a Minox 35GT btw) certainly didn't have too many scruples.
It turned out to be a burning issue with the Lady Diana case. The photographers were found guilty of "unlawful murder". Hadn't they been only lead by the smell of money, those papparazzis (one papparazzi, two papparazzis, since Papparazzi is the name of a character in La Dolce Vita) wouldn't have chased a Mercedes 600 driving over 100mp/h in the streets of Paris at Night (how silly!). You never know the consenquences of such acts, that's why I think it's better deciding of guidelines before.
 
I had a 'beard' like that... it was really itchy...

I had a 'beard' like that... it was really itchy...

...you choose...
 
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