Candid photos of young women

[Gumby]

There's a Zen Koan that goes: Twenty monks and one nun, named Eshun, were studying at a temple. A monk, who was in love with Eshun, tried to arrange a secret meeting. She ignored his letter, but the next day she stood up in front of all the people at the temple and said: "if you love me, why don't you say it now?"

I can't stand the suspense. Please tell the end of the story... did he?

 

[f16sunshine]

Bob
Regardless of the topic of discussion here. I really like this capture. The framing,perspective, and DOF you chose really work. Nice one!

This thread is all over the road. IMHO a public place is public, a private place is private. There are lines that might get crossed. Each to his own. I don't shoot much candids. Well, put it this way. I don't shoot much were it is not known that a camera and capture is involved. Why shoot with a long lens? I don't think you can actually find the "shot" unless you are close to the subject.

As to the morality of Candids. Not for me to decide but I will say this. Show you have a pair and take a chance at confrontation with your subject. Any conflict should come from the subject who feels you have violated their privacy. Not some Morality police who have no idea of the context of your final image.

 

[oldoc]

Morality police and freedom of expression is always cited by groups with no legitimate reason for what they do. This is more right/wrong relative to the internet. No one here wants censorship.
I refuse to take over threads, so my last post here, assuming appropriate responses to the question is this:
your 17 year old, girl next door niece travels with your family to the beach. While playing in the surf, with your children, a wave knocks all of them down. When girl next door comes out of the water, her one piece suit is somewhere around her waist. Now little Joey Nikon shoots this bare breasted girl before she restores herself. Does little Joey have the moral right to make the girl the next internet queen?

 

[micromontenegro]

Morality police and freedom of expression is always cited by groups with no legitimate reason for what they do. This is more right/wrong relative to the internet. No one here wants censorship.
I refuse to take over threads, so my last post here, assuming appropriate responses to the question is this:
your 17 year old, girl next door niece travels with your family to the beach. While playing in the surf, with your children, a wave knocks all of them down. When girl next door comes out of the water, her one piece suit is somewhere around her waist. Now little Joey Nikon shoots this bare breasted girl before she restores herself. Does little Joey have the moral right to make the girl the next internet queen?

Nope, Joey would deserve his comeuppance, because he would be taking advantage of an involuntary turn of events. It would be illegal too, BTW.

BUT, if he took the pic five seconds before... not my thing, but I would not throw the first (nor the last) stone.

 

[djonesii]

Dave,

I followed the link (nice set of photos, BTW). But you have photos of human brains in jars in that set. Yes, I assume they're in an appropriate museum context. But still: human brains in jars! And people think taking photos of attractive young ladies is creepy 😕.

...Mike

(Dave, this isn't any reflection on you or your photos. Rather it is about what some people choose to see as "creepy".)

The museum of comparative anatomy in Paris IS a creepy place, two headed sheep and goats in jars, baby skeletons, human brains in jars, etc ..... but, it's a great place to capture interesting images. The orangutan sculpture in the entrance is just flat shocking. In the rhetorical sense does that mean I should not capture the images? To me, it is a question of intent .... the intent of the captures that I make is to document the way that I see a certain city, if I happen to capture of few beautiful young girls as part of my view of the city, so be it.

On the other hand, if I want to take nude photos of models, I do it in a studio. A nude beach is NOT the place to do it, the intent may be the same, but the context is VERY different. As to the moral imperative of a "private figure" loosing their top on the beach, I feel there is a moral imperative not to post that. On the other hand if it's a public figure, all's fair in love and war! The price of a public life. As I spend a lot of time in France, the appropriate response to breasts on a beach is "eh allor" or so what??

Dave

 

[crawdiddy]

As to the morality of Candids. Not for me to decide but I will say this. Show you have a pair and take a chance at confrontation with your subject. Any conflict should come from the subject who feels you have violated their privacy. Not some Morality police who have no idea of the context of your final image.

So you're saying it's not necessarily IMMORAL to photograph surreptitiously, but it does make you a WIMP?

And by confronting your subject, she/he will know the CONTEXT of your final image, and therefore be able to give consent or not?

If this is your ethical code for photographers, I think it is overly restrictive, and I see several logical problems with it, and the first one is: 1) how does the subject know what the final image will look like? Or much less the context in which it will be presented? Perhaps a bigger problem is to assume right to privacy in a public place.

 

[mackigator]

Here's the link to the photos at issue, posted with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29229060@N04/

I have no problem with the photos. Beauty is important stuff and hard to get in the frame. I'm willing to leave plenty of room, morally and otherwise, for photographers who want to capture it with a smiling woman in the frame. Without that room I don't know how art could exist as we know it.

There has been lots of good discussion here - I particularly agree with Bob Michaels about reasonable expectation of privacy. It takes some guts to take photos on the street at close range and I suspect the photographer has learned where the boundaries are one subject at a time.

 

[sirius]

It's all rather a non-issue.

If you don't like the photos, then don't look at them. Let this adult go about his own business and deal with his own karma. The only thing this guy is photographing is his own loneliness.

There are a lot of people I find offensive in this world, and just as many I can have compassion for and see that they are muddled and suffering in their own way. I certainly think what George Bush junior did to the world is a lot more offensive and worth my rage than this weirdo photographer.

 

[kermaier]

OK, now that I've actually seen the photos, I have to say that these are no big deal -- in my opinion, and from my frame of reference.

It's clear to me that the photographer likes to take pictures of pretty young women, both up close with eye contact and from afar/unawares. My reaction is that some of the up-close pictures are strong and almost all of the others are weak and boring. The fact that the photographer includes the telephoto shots hints to me that he's more interested in the girls as objects of desire than in the pictures as art or documentary photography (or maybe he's just a lousy editor).

I can understand how someone recognizing herself in one of these pictures posted on the internet might be annoyed. And I think the photographer shows poor judgement and little empathy by posting them. But I don't anyone's rights are being violated here.

Interestingly, the photographer has put notes in the captions of some of the pictures describing the objections some of his subjects had -- both at the time of the photograph and later when the pictures were seen linked from other web sites. This doesn't seem to have made him reconsider his approach. Oh well -- not everyone you meet (or don't see) on the street is a gentleman and a scholar....

::Ari

 

[Papercut]

Looked through his stream and while a lot of the shots are mundane to my eye, I don't find anything objectionable about the subject matter, the treatment he gives it, nor the stream as a whole. He has LOTS of shots that are obviously taken with consent (girls giving big smiles to the camera) and a large proportion of shots of other subject matter entirely (birds, close ups of tattoos, trees, sunsets, etc., etc.). Discussion of censorship and photographic ethics is hardly ever completely pointless, but I don't see anything in the link mackigator posted to get even mildly upset over.

 

[f16sunshine]

Yup +1 more. Yawn.....

 

[ruben]

Under the description of Panda about the specific person, I would agree most with dmr's original and unexpected coment, that the person seems to be an impotent for creating a meaningfull relationship.

Besides that, I would like to thank all the folks who undertook to illustrate the thread with their images, and furthermore to those who posted several. It may have been, according to each one, a good assumption that behaving otherwise, their entire life photographic work would pass by absolutely unseen.

A sort of parallel.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[newsgrunt]

Wow, I can't believe we're at 6 pages over these photos. Most are shot with what I would say is tacit permission and the others well, they're nothing salacious afaic. They don't seem to have been shot with a long lens at all (>200). He does like ink shots but that's cool.

Guess we can move on now 😉

 

[kermaier]

Wow, I can't believe we're at 6 pages over these photos. Most are shot with what I would say is tacit permission and the others well, they're nothing salacious afaic. They don't seem to have been shot with a long lens at all (>200). He does like ink shots but that's cool.

Guess we can move on now 😉

Amen, may it be His will.

 

[Todd.Hanz]

Here's the link to the photos at issue, posted with permission:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29229060@N04/

for real?
those are the shots that caused such an uproar, uhmazing!

Todd

 

[FallisPhoto]

Please point out where I said anything about assault. As far as I remember, I only said I would "have a word or two," meaning tell him how my wife doesn't like it and ask him to delete the photo. Would I be unhappy about it? Sure. Attack the guy? I never said that, and would never do that.

I assumed you meant threaten when you said you'd have a word or two with him. Threaten = assault.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Under the description of Panda about the specific person, I would agree most with dmr's original and unexpected coment, that the person seems to be an impotent for creating a meaningfull relationship.

DMR does not call anybody impotent.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

for real?
those are the shots that caused such an uproar, uhmazing!

Todd

Yep.

This thread reminds me of that old lady in England who got arrested, because her photographing an empty playground caused suspicion that she was a pedophile.

I think there's not enough outrage over empty and misguided outrage.

 

[GarrettB]

It needs to be said/recognized that all a camera does is create a visual representation of what we already see.

 

[peterm1]

Yep.

This thread reminds me of that old lady in England who got arrested, because her photographing an empty playground caused suspicion that she was a pedophile.

I think there's not enough outrage over empty and misguided outrage.

Are you kidding - this is a clear instance of wrongful arrest. Even outside the US, law enforcement must have some kind of probable cause. Still at another level I have been reading about the resurgence of the 'nanny state" in the UK. So perhaps I am not so shocked after all.