The world we live in and it’s strange inhabitants…

On Thursday, I wanted to take a walk around my neighbourhood to see what all was up and blooming. I wasn’t one street away from home when a man came tearing outside to see just exactly what it was that I was taking photos of. I have had this happen before so I stopped and looked him in the eye and politely said, “I’m just walking around my neighbourhood taking some photos of the spring flowers.” He got his tightie whities all in a bunch and asked if I had taken any on his property. I said yes, I had taken a photo of the angel in his front garden.

He informed me that I needed permission in order to take photos of anything in people’s front yard and I, having half a brain, said, no, I really didn’t need permission to stand on a public street and take a photo of something that was clearly outside where there was no expectation of privacy, but that I would be happy to erase the photo if he preferred and would never photograph anything near his home again.

“Well,” he informed me, he did not want to be a hard ass donkey but those are the rules!”

Silly old man. I read every photography blog there is and I KNOW what “the rules” are for photographing outdoors in public. Those scare tactics might have worked on someone years ago but, you see, now there’s this thing called THE INTERNET…

“No sir,” I told him, “those are NOT the rules but I would be happy, as your neighbour, to respect your wishes and delete the shot of the angel.” That is when he informed me that people can’t be too careful these days – that you have to be on your toes at every turn and that nobody should be photographing anybody’s ANYTHING without their permission.

With that, I turned and walked on down the street. I had had enough. Maybe in HIS world everyone is out to do harm to others, but not in mine. I am a 30something yr old woman with a camera strapped to my neck, neatly dressed and very unassuming in nature. Whatever possessed this man to think that I was out to bring down the wrath of evil on his home was BEYOND me. Still, I did the right thing and walked on without further upsetting him. I felt sorry for him all afternoon, though, that he is living in one of the safest neighbourhoods in the Scranton area and he’s standing in the street chewing out a harmless woman (myself) who was clearly not shooting anything you could not clearly see from your average car window.

Well, he can live in that world of fear and trepidation but I simply refuse to. So, be forewarned, Interneters, I am hereby granting express permission for the entire world to stand on the street outside my front yard and take all the photographs they want of my tulips, daffodils, dead grass and broken tree limbs. Have at it. Stand on your head if you want to. I’m not going to call the cops on you and you can’t make me.

The best part was I didn’t need the photo of his grimy old angel statue anyway. I got this image when I turned the corner:

[IMG]http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h121/salady2005/DSC139.jpg[/IMG]