Topic: Spot on grumpy old man rant

[hookstrapped]

“Digital photography: a great way to destroy memories, not keep them” @david_hewson https://medium.com/@david_hewson/digital-photography-a-great-way-to-destroy-memories-not-keep-them-a013e2ebd3cc

[jharr]

NICE! Unfortunately, I am not as slow to anger and the first digipic collector that pulls me away from admiring a Monet is going to find their fancy camera tossed out on the sidewalk. But that's just me.

[charles binns]

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with all his points.  I'll bet there are plenty of very rude film photographers out there.  A DSLR doesn't turn you into a sociopathic monster -  your own inner demons and insecurities do that (at least they do in my case).  Read some of the comments threads on APUG and Photo.net if you want to see film aficionados hurl insults at each other.

Digital photography isn't responsible for sh*t pictures, it just made it a damned sight cheaper to take them and the internet has made it easier for a million hipsters with ludicrous pretentions to be the next "Streetog" to plaster the ether with their mediocre offerings.

Mind you the same thing has happened to me as happened to the author of the article in Pompei

A few years ago I travelled to Egypt with my Mexican in laws.  My mother in law and I were admiring a statue of something with an animal head in a rather beautiful temple when a rude (English) woman waving a DSLR (though it could just as easily been a Hasselblad) started tutting and gesticulating at us to get out of the way.

I turned to my MIL and said in Spanish in a loud and very sarcastic voice "Senora, mejor que nos quitemos por que esta guera piensa que es fotografa para el National Geographic"  I put particular emphasis on the words fotografa and National Geographic and looked a the woman straight in the eye.  She guessed exactly what I was saying and became rather embarassed.  Hopefully that was the last time she behaved in that fashion.

 

[Bryan]

That's just plain rude to ask someone to move like that, if you're in a hurry you should come back to the museum later when you have more time. 

The article reminds me of one of the main reasons I abandoned digital, I was overwhelmed with all the digital footage and rarely ever looked at it, especially the video.  We watch the 8mm home movies and look at personal view master reels on a regular basis.  It's the same as listening to music on vinyl, you're more engaged in the process so you pay more attention to it. 
 

[SLVR]

Is it too late to change my vote for PM? I wanna nominate this guy. Francois what do you think?

[Indofunk]

even (I cringe remembering this one) masses of white body type against a black background

  My major gripe too.

[Francois]

Is it too late to change my vote for PM? I wanna nominate this guy. Francois what do you think?

Like usual, it wouldn't change much around here... but I do like his common sense

Somehow, I like to say I like remembering stuff as a protection against Alzheimer's... the more you use your brain, the better it gets.
If you have to check your photo library to know you've been to some place before... either you have too many frequent flyer miles (and should give me some) or should stay home a bit more often...

But I do agree that rude people (not just photographers) are becoming too common... even here.

[hookstrapped]

even (I cringe remembering this one) masses of white body type against a black background

  My major gripe too.

Que?  (Juat?)

[Late Developer]

Is it too late to change my vote for PM? I wanna nominate this guy. Francois what do you think?

But I do agree that rude people (not just photographers) are becoming too common... even here.

Try working in the City of London - the home of the self(ie) obsessed tosser.

At the risk of being tagged as anti-social, I would love to taser the dozens of hoodie wearing, earphones-in, staring moron-like at their mobile phone / tablet and couldn't give a flying f**k about anyone else sh*t-for-brains I have to contend with every weekday morning when I come out of Liverpool Street station and on the 15 minute walk to my office.  They are like some sub-zombies and get really indignant if you don't realise they own the pavement (sidewalk) and we should get out of their way even - though it's they who aren't looking where they're going and aren't remotely aware of what's going on around them.

And if it's not them, it's some religious nut-job, Jehovah's Witness trying to stuff some propaganda into anyone's hand that will accept it like some rabid, evangelist double-glazing sales-person. How and why are they allowed to be able to try to impose their belief system on unsuspecting passers-by?

In the 15 minutes it takes me to walk from Liverpool Street to where I work (after spending an hour + on some cr*ppy, over-priced, crammed and unreliable commuter sweat-box of a train that costs me and my missus £4,300 each per year for a season ticket) I am ready to kill.  I am not joking.

/rant over - but it's not really as I have another 10 years to retirement.

[SLVR]

We used to have a lot more religious extremists in Toronto. These days the christians have taken a silent approach. Most of the time you're bothered by "Doctors without borders" people or "I am a Girl" people who just try to engage you and waste your time on the street to talk blabber on about whatever. I love the black history people. While i'm not a racist i've been called one many times by these ass hats. Seems a "Im not interested have a great day" means something else to them.

ah The little details of living in the city...

[Bryan]

Try working in the City of London - the home of the self(ie) obsessed tosser.

At the risk of being tagged as anti-social, I would love to taser the dozens of hoodie wearing, earphones-in, staring moron-like at their mobile phone / tablet and couldn't give a flying f**k about anyone else sh*t-for-brains I have to contend with every weekday morning when I come out of Liverpool Street station and on the 15 minute walk to my office.  They are like some sub-zombies and get really indignant if you don't realise they own the pavement (sidewalk) and we should get out of their way even - though it's they who aren't looking where they're going and aren't remotely aware of what's going on around them.

That sounds like the rant I get from my wife on a regular basis.  She works in downtown Seattle next to the Amazon.com headquarters.  If one more of those nerds bumps into her on the sidewalk the phone is going to get tossed. 

[Late Developer]

Try working in the City of London - the home of the self(ie) obsessed tosser.

At the risk of being tagged as anti-social, I would love to taser the dozens of hoodie wearing, earphones-in, staring moron-like at their mobile phone / tablet and couldn't give a flying f**k about anyone else sh*t-for-brains I have to contend with every weekday morning when I come out of Liverpool Street station and on the 15 minute walk to my office.  They are like some sub-zombies and get really indignant if you don't realise they own the pavement (sidewalk) and we should get out of their way even - though it's they who aren't looking where they're going and aren't remotely aware of what's going on around them.

That sounds like the rant I get from my wife on a regular basis.  She works in downtown Seattle next to the Amazon.com headquarters.  If one more of those nerds bumps into her on the sidewalk the phone is going to get tossed.

It is.  It's been 16 years since I moved south to work in London.  The commute wasn't great in 1999 but it has just got steadily and incrementally worse.  I enjoy my work and London has some fantastic amenities.  It's the commute and running the gauntlet on the way to work, for a mile each way, through a mass of people who are so self-obsessed that they think it's acceptable to shut off two of their senses (headphones in and staring at a phone / tablet) and pretend that they have no social or moral responsibility to other commuters / fellow human beings. 

[Kayos]

Great article, I've never been asked to move but I love watching people take a shot with a dslr then the look of confusion and disappointment as they look at the LCD.

Saw a woman trying to photograph some fish in tropical world, after her 9th or 10th go I walked over, got my boy to pose and took one shot, then walked off

She seemed even more confused as I didn't check the screen, which would have been quite a feat on a film camera.....

[Francois]

Here in Quebec, there are quite a few differences in how people are rude. The province is strangely not very present on the internet, or at least not as much as I'd expect. There are very few content providers and the selfie craze is not evenly distributed across the territory. People spend more time texting nothingness than taking selfies.
And apart from Montreal, camera wielding people are somewhat rare. When you go out with a camera, people look at you like if you were some sort of freak.
And public transit is just a nightmare of inefficiency, so everybody is in their car hoping to save time and driving like maniacs... Which eventually causes them to have an accident which slows them down even more.
That's pretty much why I try and avoid having to go to the big city.
So if you don't mind nightmarish roads and bad over saturated public transit, this is probably the best selfie free zone of North America!

[limr]

I'm slow to anger in some situations....wait. Scratch that. I might get angry quickly, but I don't always express it. If or how I express that anger would depend on the situation. Someone asking me to move in front of the tapestry? I dunno, it doesn't seem worth it. Or maybe, if I was in "a mood", I would be sarcastic: move aside, make a grand sweeping gesture, say something like, "Oh please, by all means." Someone literally pushing me out of the way? Oh, HELLZ no. The New York would burst out full force in a hot second.

I mean, it's not like I've never been the one anxious for some big oaf to get out of my shot, but I don't think I have ever asked someone to move unless they were done looking at whatever and were then just dithering about on their phones, blocking everyone else's view for no good reason at all. And even then, it was a very polite, "I'm really sorry, but could I just switch places with you for a second?"

The part when he talks about the picture as proof that you were somewhere made me chuckle. My father was kind of like that, but his thought was to truly prove it, one of us had to actually be in the picture. So somewhere, there are pictures of, say, the Washington monument with a tiny blue dot at the bottom of it, which is me.

[02Pilot]

As someone who is more or less permanently annoyed, and as such has devoted a tremendous amount of time to figure out the best ways to express said emotional state, allow me to offer some photography-related suggestions. Generally, the guiding principle is to do to the person annoying you the thing that will most annoy them. If someone is rudely suggesting you move out of their way to take a picture, turn around and start taking their picture, repeatedly, while still obstructing their view of their intended subject. Keep doing this. This approach also tends to work for the sidewalk lunatic; if there are enough potential witnesses around, really get in their face while snapping away. For the cellphone drone, stop directly in front of them and raise your camera. Let them bump into you. If you're feeling particularly belligerent, try to put an eye out with your lens, or at least knock the phone out of their hand.

Active annoyance is far more satisfying than passive annoyance.

[charles binns]

It's easier and, in the long run far better, not to get annoyed by something which, in the greater scheme of things, is really rather a trifling matter.  So some random stranger behaves like an oaf?  Get over it and move on.

[02Pilot]

It's easier and, in the long run far better, not to get annoyed by something which, in the greater scheme of things, is really rather a trifling matter.  So some random stranger behaves like an oaf?  Get over it and move on.

Probably true for most, but not me. I get it out of my system much faster by going on the offensive.

[Jack Johnson]

It's the commute and running the gauntlet on the way to work, for a mile each way, through a mass of people who are so self-obsessed that they think it's acceptable to shut off two of their senses (headphones in and staring at a phone / tablet) and pretend that they have no social or moral responsibility to other commuters / fellow human beings.

On that note, I'm a chronic people watcher, as I suspect many of you are.

Does it ever surprise you how few people watchers there are? The last time I was at the airport my wife and I tried to count the other people watchers, and I think we got up to four before we had to board, and one of them was a pre-teen girl without a digital device, so it may have just been an accident.

[Francois]

As someone who is more or less permanently annoyed, and as such has devoted a tremendous amount of time to figure out the best ways to express said emotional state, allow me to offer some photography-related suggestions. Generally, the guiding principle is to do to the person annoying you the thing that will most annoy them. If someone is rudely suggesting you move out of their way to take a picture, turn around and start taking their picture, repeatedly, while still obstructing their view of their intended subject. Keep doing this. This approach also tends to work for the sidewalk lunatic; if there are enough potential witnesses around, really get in their face while snapping away. For the cellphone drone, stop directly in front of them and raise your camera. Let them bump into you. If you're feeling particularly belligerent, try to put an eye out with your lens, or at least knock the phone out of their hand.

Active annoyance is far more satisfying than passive annoyance.

This is giving me a heck of an idea!
We should all make some business cards that say Hi! I'm Bruce Gilden, get ourselves some automatic flashes and just plain paparazzi the living daylights out of them...
And as a bonus, we're bound to get some definitely prize winning shots in the process! 

[Indofunk]

If you're feeling particularly belligerent, try to put an eye out with your lens, or at least knock the phone out of their hand.

On a slightly related note, when someone on the subway clearly doesn't grasp (pun intended) the concept of holding onto something solid while the train is moving, I always stick out a knuckle and place it very close to their body, preferably near a sensitive place (spine, shoulder blade, kidney, etc). It doesn't happen often, sadly, but I like to think that those times that they DO end up getting jostled directly into my fist (sometimes I up the ante with a key stuck out between the knuckles), it teaches them a valuable lesson about holding onto a pole while on a moving subway car.

[Ed Wenn]

Well, THIS has been a cheerful little thread, hasn't it?

[02Pilot]

Well, THIS has been a cheerful little thread, hasn't it?

By New York standards, totally. 

[Francois]

Well, THIS has been a cheerful little thread, hasn't it?

Quite true... But there has to be a way to make fun of this situation.