I'm just Making a Photograph... Now Leave Me Alone!

I tend to run into… colorful people while photographing (I have some good stories about it saved up for later), although that is not what this story is about, but I need to tell a colorful person story to get to the point. So, as I'm sure you have surmised, I was just out photographing... at 11:00 at night in Minneapolis near the U (hey, I have class till 10, it’s the only time I can make night photographs!). I have had an interest in night photograph and have spent many hours in the dead of winter in 30 below weather making photographs - not a pleasant experience. So anyway I continue in the summer, much nicer, but more people are out and about - imagine that. I was photographing a house less than a block away from my studio using the 4x5 (for those of you that don't know, it's a camera that makes 4" x 5" negatives, and while getting the photo ready you need to look under a dark cloth to see the image). So there I was, on the sidewalk getting ready to shoot with this big black cloth over my head.

I hear someone coming on a bike, some guy swearing about something, I submerged from the dark cloth, he drove by (biking on the side walk my tripod and I were standing on, might I add). Then he stopped, turned around and asked what I was doing. I said, "Oh, Just making a photograph."

"What?"

"Making a photograph."

"What?"

He obviously had no idea what I meant, "Taking a picture."

He asked for a cigarette, none of which I had, stared at me for a minute, (and I stared right back at him mind you - I sure wasn't going right back under the dark cloth while he was right there) then he turned around and left, swearing some more. I finished getting the photo ready, made the photograph, and left.

So the whole point of this story, especially for those non-photographers out there: is the phrase "making a photograph," an acceptable way to say I'm taking a picture, and don’t want to talk about it, GO AWAY? Although he seemed fine, perhaps this person was not in the right state of mind to be able to think about words (with all that swearing and such), so perhaps this encounter is not the best situation to gage the response.



I was interested in being able to see into the house with all the lights on at night, but the tree obscures the potentially voyeuristic view. So the picture turned out okay, it is no masterpiece though, the story that goes along with it...priceless...