Everyone, me more than most, doesn’t want their picture taken, or to be in the background of other photos. When someone can take thousands of pictures an hour, and upload them all to some social media site to be permanently stored… idk it’s shifted from a way to capture a moment to feeling like you’re being survieled.

A bit hyperbolic, but it’s the best way to describe what I’m feeling

About 15-20 years ago I attended a lot of car events (races, shows) where I took lots of photos. Mostly of moving cars, but also a lot of closeups of race car drivers using a long lens. For about a year more than half the photos published in a very niche car publication were by me. The magazine had a few thousand subscribers. And to this day I still see some drivers use my shots of them as profile pictures etc. Nobody minded being photographed. In fact, they were really happy about it.

Then social media happened. There’s a different «public» now. Any picture taken and published now has the potential to go viral. To get a global audience. And not least: to be put in unpleasant contexts.

I can understand that people’s attitudes have changed.

I haven’t actually given up taking photos in public. In part because I think it is important that people do. I still take pictures of strangers. Then again, I very rarely publish them online out of respect for their privacy.

I understand how photos represent something else today. And that people view the act of taking a picture differently. But if we stop taking pictures, stop exercising our rights to take pictures, we will lose them. Through a process of erosion.

They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them without their permission, and yet, here we are....

The rule is: if you're in public you have no expectation of privacy.

I think a debate on that rule would be interesting. My thought is that if I can't take a picture unless there's absolutely nobody else in the FOV, then that basically prohibits the vast majority of photographs.

That's primarily because it makes it absolutely clear the public always has the right to record officials doing their job. So if you see a policeman murdering George Floyd in the street, or fellow shopper pushing an old woman out of the way, or a parent screaming abuse at an umpire, or even just someone littering in a national park there is no doubt you are allowed to record it.

Yes, this means towards more surveillance, but it's a counter balance to the surveillance state. The state and large corporations put cameras everywhere. It seems odd to me that people get really upset by taking photos of them when there are likely numerous CCTV cameras already doing that 24 hours a day, in not so public places like offices. The "anyone can take photos in a public place" rule means Joe Citizen gets the same rights as the corporations and governments take for themselves.

I'm in the minority though. The best illustration I've seen of the was a man take a photo of the cheer leaders at a big football game. He leaned over the fence and put his camera on the ground, taking the photo as the girl kicked her leg into the air. His actions where caught on the TV camera that was broadcasting that same girls crouch around the nation. The police prosecuted him because of the huge outcry. I'm can't recall what the outcome in court was, but I couldn't see how he could be breaking the photography rules given my country has the "expectation of privacy" rule.

I can understand people don’t like this. Which is why actually doing it requires a good deal of sensitivity and common sense. But that doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to outlaw it.

However taking a picture is not the same as publishing it. This is the critical point.

The rules for what you can publish tend to be stricter. For instance where I live you can’t generally publish a picture of a person without consent. (It is a bit more complicated than that in practice, with lots of complicated exceptions that are not always spelled out in law. For instance if someone is making a public speech they have no expectation of privacy).

As for making it illegal: that comes with far greater problems than you might think. From losing the right to document abuses of power to robbing people of the freedom to take pictures in public.

In fact, years ago a law was passed here making it illegal to photograph arrests. A well intentioned law meant to protect suspects who have not been convicted of anything. However it has never been enacted because it was deemed dangerous. It would have made it illegal to document police misconduct, for instance. And since the press here is generally very disciplined about not publishing photos of the majority of suspects, it didn’t actually solve a problem. (In Norway identities are usually withheld in the press until someone is convicted. But sometimes identities are already known to the public. For instance in high profile cases. This, of course, varies by country)

Public photography is cultural preservation and anthropological ethnography. Asking folks to stop is selfish. You are free to have an opinion that differs, and your jurisdiction may even forbid public photography, but in those places I’m familiar with, street photography is as legitimate an art as music played for free on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t argue against public concerts if I were deaf, as it doesn’t concern me, because it isn’t for me, were I unhearing, and the gathering that such public displays engender benefits one and all, regardless of differences of senses or sensibilities amongst those who choose to freely associate.

> In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent should be illegal.

Capturing an image of another without their consent is a bit more nuanced, and I would agree that one is entitled to decide how they are portrayed to a degree, but public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive. All the same, though we may disagree, you have given me some food for thought. I appreciate your unique perspective on this issue, and I thank you sincerely for sharing your point of view.

I live in a country where photographing people in public is highly restricted. The reason is that 99% of people cannot avoid public places in their day-to-day lives, therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.

They can’t in those places with the restrictions you are familiar with and are subject to, but that is no argument against the norms of other places and the denizens thereof. I can, and do see public spaces as a free-for-all, and that is neither better nor worse, but simply the way we do things here.

If you don’t like it, it doesn’t affect you. Most folks are aware, and make a mental note of such things from a young age. If we don’t like it that way, we have avenues to change the way we relate to each other in public by changing the laws and regulations that govern public photography. That society hasn’t reached a consensus on this and other issues is fine. Variety is the spice of life, and the spice must flow.

I’ve known deaf people who love going to concerts. They perceive the thrumming of the bass and the stomp of the crowd. They see the smiles and throw up their hands, and deaf folks are able to carry on a conversation by signing better than most folks who are hearing, especially when the music is turned up to 11.

I’m more concerned with what might happen to assistive technologies meant to be used in public by low-vision and (legally or fully) blind users if public photography bans are passed than I am about any other passing concerns about being photographed in public, to be honest.

Jurisprudence in my country can’t preempt legal activities because they might lead to wrongdoing in the future. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t know what you think folks are likely to do, but there are likely already laws against doing most things you would take umbrage with.

There’s no need to winnow our rights out of concern for your “mights.”

Which are here too.

People can complain about whatever they want. It’s entirely legal to have an opinion, since you seem so preoccupied with laws.

You can certainly photograph street scenes without being a rude cunt.

I can’t top that as a “how do you do,” and yet, it’s both of our birthright to be “a rude cunt” or worse, within the bounds of the law.

I was getting enduly riled up over anonymous internet comments and was going to say something much more obnoxious, but not everyone gets Australian humour so I figured I’d tone it down.

If I saw you take an unasked photo of our blind friend here, I’d let them know so they’d have an opportunity to approach you and ask you to deleted it, if they happen to feel motivated to do so, and offer to take care of it myself ;)

[0] (For those who haven't seen The Castle (1997), you really owe it to the Australians in your life to make an appointment with yourself to do so at your earliest convenience. Here's the scene from the film in question which originated one of my favorite bits of Aussie slang:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtMTbKX6_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(1997_Australian_fi... )

—-

I’m in to that! It’d be a photo of me falling flat on my face / generally making a fool of myself. Perfect pool room photo.

Have a lovely day.

The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone cameras, photo rolls, social media, growth/engagement algorithms, attention economy, virality, etc) vs now just doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy" and "no expectation of having every moment of your life in public be liable to be published".

And at that point, the only thing left is the "well if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't care if your life is published" type of logic, and I don't love that.

I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed.

Edit: and I use "published" as a direct reference to the "publish" or "post" buttons on various social media apps.

And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings.

(Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information)

Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.

Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.

Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of the insane amounts of data various data brokers aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And many of us are also part of the problem.

I do think this should be addressed. Especially since it is hard to address and it is not going to get any easier. In a well functioning legal system, every single one of the large data brokers that trade in sensitive personal information should be in existential peril. And people associated with them should be at very real risk of ending up in prison.

It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights that private citizens have had for more than a century and at the same time not do anything about, for instance, private parties raiding sensitive government data and essentially nobody caring or showing any willingness to do anything about it.

You are right in that we do have a "the ship has sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the rights of private citizens further because that is "being seen as doing something".

(I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd conclusions this might lead us to)

When it comes to following lines of reasoning to absurd conclusions though, in the other direction, don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's right (private or public for that matter) to surveil everyone at all times the moment they step outside?

Isn't that something you have an issue with? An extension of the existing problem with data brokers, including ones that record data from interactions on their private space (eg our access to their products in their stores, etc)?

You're definitely right that there are worse offenders out there than "randos taking pictures", but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing.

Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's not great that every other person on the street can now record them and post it on social media for engagement also doesn't like the other bits of tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.

Even published works didn't have the reach and accessibility they have today. Today even your random mobile phone snaps could make it onto newspaper front pages around the globe in a matter of hours -- even minutes. Or someone might be able to find them after doing a search even if they were published to what the creator thought was a limited audience.

So I think we have to be aware that although we, in most western countries, have had the right to take pictures of people in public spaces for a bit more than 100 years, some fundamental things have indeed changed. It isn't exactly the same thing anymore and we have to acknowledge that.

However, we also have to acknowledge that there are degrees when it comes to infringing on someone's privacy. Someone shooting pictures in the street doesn't immediately qualify as "surveillance". Yes, the picture may land online and yes, it may turn up when you perform searches. But I think calling it surveillance is bordering on arguing in bad faith.

Surveillance is surveillance.

If we allow the argument that all capture of images or video is surveillance to pass without drawing attention to the use of misleading and loaded wording, we might end up eroding practices that are extremely important. Imagine, for instance, how difficult news coverage of important events would be if we were to ban any and all filming or photographing of people in public spaces without their consent. ()

You might argue that this is taking things to an extreme, but it actually isn't. It is a problem we deal with already. Covering the actions of law enforcement has always been difficult, and just in the last few months in the US, it has gotten a lot worse. A good example is coverage of the Pentagon right now, where only those who have signed away their rights to truthfully cover what they see and hear have access.

Which means all of us are now less informed and less able to develop informed opinions and make informed choices.

Some might argue that "journalists" are a different "class of observer" that is to be afforded more freedom, but this gets us into even more trouble. Again, what happened at the Pentagon represents a very concrete example. You do not want there to be a special class of people who are specially licensed to observe and communicate "the truth" -- as that license can be used to dictate what "truth" they report.

() Filming or photographing newsworthy events isn't without its moral dilemmas. I used to photograph demonstrations because they provide opportunities for capturing visually interesting images of people. The more intense the demonstration, the more interesting images you could get. However, the more polarized and angry a society gets, and as the risk of government overreach increases, the more you run the risk of endangering people taking part in protests by taking their picture. The last few protests I've observed first hand (having my camera with me), I've actually not taken any pictures. Because I didn't feel it would be advisable to publish the images (so I might as well not take any). I'm probably not alone in this. Which is bad news both because we have to fear for people's security, but it also makes protests less effective.

Interestingly, the national broadcasting service in Norway chose to broadcast the Charlie Kirk funeral live. However, there was nearly no coverage of the "No Kings" protest that gathered 7 million people in the US. Most people here may have heard of it, many have not, and there exists exactly zero "iconic" defining images of it. Which means that it is almost as if it didn't happen. There are no memorable images of it in the public consciousness over here. Not one. Only bland pictures of crowds that fail to hold anyone's attention. There were at least half a dozen far more compelling pictures and clips of the Charlie Kirk funeral.

So on one hand you could argue that privacy was, in some sense, respected. On the other hand you could also argue that as an instance of political speech, it was far less effective than one would have assumed when 7 million people take to the streets.

Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going.

It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.

In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are significant limits to how such pictures can be published (including social media).

By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.

The former was a relatively small event broadcast live. The latter was a huge protest involving more people than the populations of some small countries. However, their media footprint was very different.

The No Kings protest produced no iconic visuals and was rapidly forgotten by international media. It had considerably less staying power than, say, the arab spring. Arguably because there existed no compelling visuals. It might as well have been a small protest of 100k people for the footprint it occupies in international consciousness.

The Charlie Kirk funeral, on the other hand, produced half a dozen memorable images that circulated for weeks.

It bears thinking about.

I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.

The times may have changed, and we didn’t start the fire. We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just don’t want to change as much as the times, and that’s okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a living thing. We can always go a different way if the future we arrive upon necessitates it.

I don’t mind if we have to change, but I do admire the view. The camera can only capture what’s inside the frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art form, it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would occur, as that would be a material change in living conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldn’t find fault with them for simply doing so.

When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history and my place in it, I don’t think I’m the one who is entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see something, you ought be free to say something or remain silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say. Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.

I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your life without having it being recorded everywhere is also a freedom issue.

I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a "change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of privacy" because I think things have changed to a point that it needs to be addressed.

Side note: > I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.

If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading something in my comment that I haven't expressed.

If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I apologize; I almost certainly wasn’t. If anything, I am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I don’t mean to, though you are free to express whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or otherwise.

Here's an exercise you can do. Go to a library and look at books by photo journalists who have covered poverty, conflict, disaster etc. There are many, many iconic photographs that helped shape our view of the world, and not least, contributed to making us aware of what was going on. From Dorothea Lange's work in the 1920s covering poverty and suffering in the US, to photographers covering everyday life, and reporters covering anytihing from famine to war.

Now ask yourself how many of the subjects in those photos signed releases or otherwise had an opportunity to give consent.

Should we erase this history? If not, why should the subjects in those photos have fewer rights than people should have today? If so, why?

Before you think that something should be illegal you have to think about what that would actually mean.

The GDPR provides a pretty good framework for media organisations and journalists to shoot people without consent.

Here in Germany, people have a right to their own image. You can't just photograph strangers. You can photograph a crowd at a public event but you can't zoom in on one specific stranger. Also you can photograph people that are of public interest.

Maybe it is me who is biased but I find these rules quite reasonable. It protects both my privacy while allowing photographers to do their job. If you want to photograph a stranger, ask for consent.

Sure, and so am I. We're all biased toward what we are used to, especially if it's something we grew up with through childhood.

While I think it'd be creepy for someone to sit outside, zooming in on strangers and taking photos of them, I don't think that sort of thing should be illegal. (Aside from when it might break other laws, like if it were to turn into harassment.) I do think it we should require consent before publishing a photo that focuses on individuals, at least for most uses (I'm sure there are exceptions).

I don't think laws should try to spell out or enforce social norms (for the most part; again I'm sure there are exceptions I'd consider), and I think "don't be a creep with a camera" is a social norm, not a legal issue.

> It protects [...] my privacy

I just don't see getting photographed in public as a privacy issue, but I'll admit it depends on the "how". Dragnet surveillance with cameras on every corner is a privacy issue, but a single photographer with a manually-actuated camera is not.

But really, what is it about someone having a photograph of you while you're in public that violates your privacy? It may "feel icky", but I don't see that as being a violation of anyone's rights. (Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.)

At the risk of diving into whataboutism, it seems weird to me to object to public photography -- something that has many legitimate artistic and historical uses and benefits -- when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.

With analog photography this might be a useful distinction but with digital it is easy to leak that photo even without explicit intention to do so.

Even if the intention was to never share my photo, it is likely to be automatically uploaded to Google Cloud or similar services. It can be hacked, it will end up as training data for some LLM and so on. It is more practical to stop the taking of the photo in the first place.

> it seems weird to me to object to public photography

No one does. Lots of people practice public photography in Germany. You just have to ask for consent if you want to photograph strangers.

That is the point where I am lost an why this is even such a big deal for you. You can photograph the environment, you can photograph your friends, you can photograph anyone who wants to be photographed. Why would you even want to photograph someone why doesn't want their photo taken? Why not take a photo of the many people that would love to have their picture taken?

> when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.

Germany has also much better laws in that regard as well. Sure it could be better enforced but the GDPR is super strong.

As for surveillance, this is also more restricted here as well. There is definitely a push to make widespread surveillance more a thing but we are still far away from US levels.

So yeah, both is bad.

Technologically augmenting these rights does not change them. A pen and paper to record observations is a technological augmentation to memory and recall. A newspaper is an augmentation to a gossip corner. A camera is just the same. A person should be able to record and retransmit any information they come across in public, regardless of technology, since ownership of an observation is fundamentally the observer’s.

Not completely. If you keep staring at me, following me around and taking notes I am going to call the police even if you keep to public spaces.

While it is not illegal to stare at people I would strongly advice you to not do so. You will find that some people will react quite badly to it.

> You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and record their observations, and to publish these to your heart’s content.

No, you can't. They can write about the people they saw in general terms but once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you. Might vary depending on country though.

People are making such high level philosophical argument about why they should be allowed to photograph strangers but no one answers why. It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason. Sure, maybe you just like photography but then again photograph people that consent to it.

Not to mention even if you legally can, I doubt that running around photographing strangers will gain you any positive reputation. In practice you are well advised to ask for consent anyway.

It’s a good thing we have laws, courts, and prisons for people who can’t control themselves.

> once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you

For what? What right of yours have I violated by retransmitting publicly available information about you? Presumably this right of yours would also be infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree it’s not a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they protect contentious actions.

> It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason

Free people don’t need to justify their actions. Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist. Freedom of speech and the consequential freedom of the press are fundamental to a free society. Having to justify yourself when you’re not harming anyone is tyrannical.

Information that you gained from observing me is not necessarily publicly available information. You can't camp in front of an abortion clinic and write down everyone who went in and publish that on the internet, at least not in Germany.

Generally, if there is not a legitimate public interest, you can not publish information that would direct identify me, like my name, in a newspaper.

> Free people don’t need to justify their actions.

Well if you answered that questions, we could have an actual discussion.

Currently everyone that responded to me here said a variation of "everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent because everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent" with a bit of fancy works.

Like yeah this might be true and self evident because of some axioms that you have but that I don't necessary share and that you don't make explicit so this looks completely pointless to me.

I genuinely don't even understand the passion for photographing strangers without their consent and why it needs to be defended with such a lofty rhetoric.

My best attempt to steelman this is that you think restricting your god given right to photograph strangers without their consent is some slippery slop towards having more rights taken away which is... a very weak point.

> Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist.

This makes no sense to me. There is not right to photograph strangers without their consent in the declaration of human right and never has such right existed in my country so how can that be my right?

What the hell has photographing strangers without their consent to do with free speech?

My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else. My right to waive my fists around ends where your nose begins. I don’t need to justify why I’m waiving my arms around. I don’t need to justify why I’m camped outside the abortion clinic. Maybe I hate abortions and am engaged in civil protest. These are all protected activities in a free country.

My assertion is that as a consequence of German policy with regards to speech, Germany is a fundamentally less free place. Who gets to decide whether something is in the public interest? Why is shaming abortion seekers not in that category?

Now, we might not be doing well but certainly the US is currently doing much worse. You are already at the building camps stage and it is unclear whether you will have free elections for long.

What is the point of theoretically having free speech for a migrant worker that might deported without any trial by the ICE, for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned? Those that allow fascists to speak freely will end up with no one but fascists speaking.

People that want to murder me should not be allowed to speak.

> My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else.

And yes, someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm. Same as someone making lists of practicing Jews by camping outside a synagogue can get those people hurt. Your free speech ends where it can hurt me and certain information about me being public can and will hurt me.

> for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned

To discuss abortion we would have to agree about things like "what is a person?". Many would reasonably argue that unborn children are humans too and therefore deserve their own freedom.

Allowing fascists to speak freely is the hallmark of a free society. Otherwise who gets to decide who the fascists are or are not? Free societies are free as a matter of principle, not as a matter of consequence.

”I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

When Nazis marched through Skokie, Illinois in the 70s, it was Jewish lawyers who defended them. Being obsessed with liberty is a much better defence against tyranny than hoping the enormous government apparatus that determines who gets to speak and who does not will never be turned against you.

> someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm

No they do not. Any person who reads what they wrote and decides to visit violence against you is doing you harm. Don’t shift blame away from violent actors, they make their own decisions. We already have laws about violence. You are not harmed by people simply knowing you had an abortion. It is a true fact about you.

That way people would be safe from having their personal likeness and whereabouts accidentally plastered over the internet (except when they want their photo to be taken), and the end result wouldn't look so obviously modified as blurring faces or licence plates.

(And yes, I'm sure Street View imagery is edited in other ways before it makes it to production, but I think it's important that our view of reality remains as real as possible.)

No, what we need is for people to feel safe in public again, for them to not feel like they're constantly one questionable picture away from their lives being ruined. Kill social media, kill gigantic public face tracking dragnets, kill privacy-invading capitalism.

This “ick” is real and it’s good that you feel it, because you can build on it for a sense of ethics about photos and the use of the camera, about how its gaze affects subjects, about how to reduce that impact.

A solution for you is to focus on photography with people posing for photos who want the photos, or people posing for photos who want money. Try art nude, even: it is fascinating, liberating, has a very strong historical and creative through line, and will teach you a lot.

I have developed a much stronger sense of the ethics around my photography and a little more personal confidence, so I might yet give street photography a go again in future, if I think I have something specific to say.

I find something much more pervasive about any upright smartphone being a camera at any given time, whether the person is being obvious about it or not. A dedicated camera is actually more reassuring to me, as its use-cases are probably more innocent than a smartphone camera.

Smartphone cameras have given poor photography to the masses. I reckon I'm probably in thousands of peoples photos that were taken on a whim with a phone. And I've witnessed situations where it appears people are trying to stealthily take photos of people with phones on public transport and the like.

Not with 360 cameras! Which are super fun btw.

It has not, still garbage.

>It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.

I find people like it a lot and even give me contact info to get the picture I took of them which is cool.

Can’t do it while I’m renting, but maybe one day!

The second half of my process is to "scan" my film using a macro lens and my DSLR. It takes about 2 hours to go from exposed film to developed and scanned film. Only about 30 minutes of that time is active, most of it is waiting for the film to dry since I don't have a drying a cabinet.

I used to be a little into photography. No one ever protested about me taking a picture of them. Just recently I was photographing an event and thought: I just come there, take photos of everyone, upload them to the internet, and all I get is thanks. I haven't asked anyone for permission. Yes I was invited by the event organizer, but I'm sure they didn't ask permission either.

I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time and money for a small number of photos.

In contrast, a 35mm camera is very convenient and you can expose an entire 30 frame roll of film in a few minutes. But getting high quality scans of all those frames requires either a lot of time or a lot of money. (Consumer flatbeds give poor results for 35mm, so your best bet is putting the negative on a light table and using a digital camera and macro lens. But that’s a physically fiddly process, the ‘scan’ needs manual spotting for dust, and if you’re shooting color negatives you also have to do some work to get the colors right.)

Back in the day, most users of 35mm cameras were satisfied with waiting a week to get a set of prints with absolutely no creative control over the printing process, but that’s not what most people want now.

I don't deny that for a whole range of reasons, some people might take better or more meaningful photos using old cameras. Limitations can feed into the artistic process. I just think it's a bit silly to romanticize the cost and inconvenience of film, or to think that photos taken using film are somehow inherently more interesting or valuable.

YMMV, but every time I’ve brought out a camera in the last 5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.

May I ask where you are taking out your camera to experience these results? By "where," I mean both what part of the world/culture you are in and the specific location(s) (e.g. weddings, streets, public transit, work, at a friend's whom you know well, at an acquaintance's).. you get the point.

Has to be a digital.

To turn it on its head, if you cannot take photographs of people in public without their permission, then we basically lose the ability to take any photos of public space.

https://contributors.gettyimages.com/img/articles/downloads/...

Where lies the line? Would it be ok to paint a picture showing other people and show it to a third person?

Keep up the fight!

A friend of mine delivers for Amazon. They have to take pictures of every package delivered. Sometimes the customer is there when they arrive and he asks them to hold the package for him while he takes the photo of the package.

Most of them turn away or hold the package far away so they aren't in the image. Some will pose with the package in some amusing way.

Yeah when there's precedent for people doing exactly that the feeling is justified. How many times have we heard of [facebook employees/police/...] abusing their powers to stalk their [exes/wives/love interests/'enemies'/...]. With the amount of face detection and cataloguing being done today, it's never been easier on a technical level. The only protection we have is 'trust us we aren't doing it bro', which doesn't get you very far.

People use that "one thing" and make a giant case out of it, sometimes affecting millions of people. I have two (of hundreds of) examples: 1) the Tylenol poisonings in 1982 Chicago, had Johnson & Johnson recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol, and arguably affected billions of people (with all the tamperproof packaging that resulted worldwide). This was a good thing. But one crazy man poisoning a few bottles of Tylenol at one grocery store affected many people.

2) The next example is somewhat personal, but at Boeing back around 1987 or so, one tech in our engineering group was on the production floor, and a huge steel roller cart with a tool on it, weighing probably 1000 lbs, ran over his toes. From that single incident (even though 1000's of workers and 1000's of heavy carts were being used daily for dozens of years), came an edict that ALL employees on or near these facilities had to mandatorily wear huge plastic toe-caps over their shoes if they didn't have steel-toed shoes on. This meant that even secretaries in nearby offices would have to wear these clunky caps all day, over their shoes even though they never entered the production facilities. One person's action affecting 50,000 nearby employees. This is a bad thing. (because of the huge over-reaction).

So, these maybe don't fit the perfect example we are discussing, but it shows how we can come to different conclusions based on different inputs: "you can find one of anything to use in an argument".

Whenever I meet my friends and family, I show them the pictures myself and the story behind them.

I love the thrill of street photography and it gives me immense pleasure to capture candid moments of humans. It's a great creative outlet for me and helps me think about life and philosophy through my pictures.

Maybe one day I will care enough about publishing these pictures, maybe one day I will care about AI. But right now, I don't. This is the closest I've been to my "kid"-like self, just enjoying something for the heck for it.

Prime lenses will have larger apertures that can give you more creative options.

How close do you want to stand? Indoor/outdoors? What are you planning on taking pictures of? D7100 is APS-C, I find that 50mm (~75mm ff) on APS-C doesn't give you quite enough room indoors to take photos. So you might want a 35mm prime or a zoom that goes down there. If you're planning on taking portraits you don't want something too wide (~20mm and below can be good for real estate/architecture) because it makes people look weird.

Most everything else is dictated by how much you want to spend and how large/heavy you want your camera to be.

Personally I have a 35mm f1.8 on my camera and am happy with it, I use it for family outings, a lot of portrait-level shots and just general "hey we're at the museum" kind of photos.

I know a few musicians that tried to make a living out of music similar to your story. Most have now stopped making music and are both frustrated with the music industry, and angry at listeners for not valuing their work.

These days I play with both AI photography and “normal” photography. My main camera is the A9 III with a global shutter – a machine gun that fires 120fps RAW files. I shoot a lot of sports, and the people I photograph are thrilled to get such high-quality shots of moments that mattered to them. It doesn’t really matter how much cultural value society attaches to photos – those captured moments will always be meaningful to them, and they feel joy when they see them. That’s the whole point of photography for me.

AI photography is a bit different. I take 15–20 photos of a friend’s face with my camera, train a LoRA model to use with Flux1.dev, and upload it to network storage on RunPod. Then I spin up a serverless worker on an H100 that runs the ComfyUI API, and use my own Flutter-based frontend to play with prompts and generate new photos of that person. I can make far better headshots this way than in a real studio. For some friends, it’s even been a therapeutic experience – seeing so many high-quality images of themselves looking confident, happy, and fully alive helped them feel that way, even if just for a moment. One friend told me, “You did more with these AI photos of me than therapy did in the past year.”

Again, this stuff didn't start with AI.

This has rapidly changed over the last few months. As more and more pictures/videos going viral on social media are AI-generated [0, 1], real pictures/videos of remarkable things are increasingly falsely called out as AI-generated [2]. People are definitely starting to care, and while the toy camera in the linked article is merely an artistic statement, having some ubiquitously standardized way of unambiguously validating content generated by a real recording device is going to become paramount.

[0] https://www.today.com/news/bunnies-jumping-trampoline-viral-...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O-8kAnBL2s

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/1oeda67/my_highligh...

The larger you went though, the more you had to be mindful about the cost of eash shot both in terms of time and cost for film and developing. There is something to be said about the curation that happened when taking photos like that. You put a lot more though upfront into composition and had to think about your shutter speed, aperture etc..

One thing I learned about during that time was how the old time press photographers would use a Speed Graphic on 4x5 negative, grab a wide angled shot and then crop it. Also, press conferences used to create a lot of broken glass as photographers would snap a shot, shoot out the one time use flash bulb on the ground and then quickly put in another bulb to get another shot.

Some will once AI is ubiquitous. Especially of the art & entertainment sectors

I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes. So much is easily made up with AI. Having verifiable real photos (and eventually video) can be a benefit for things like legal proceedings.

That makes sense to me, but who is this particular $399 camera made for? Can you imagine someone choosing it for a photo they intend to be used in legal proceedings? The specs and appearance do not scream high-quality professional tool to me. The price is lower than a professional would be willing to spend (on something high-quality), higher than someone would drop on a whim.

It looks kinda like a designer's school assignment that they're trying to sell.

I take pics for me and my friends and family, and AI has almost zero impact on this (although, face swaping is lots of fun, and everyone understands it's fake and a joke).

Edit: also, and more importantly, the question of authenticity is moot. The point of art in general is to say something / make a statement, and certainly not to produce a faithful representation of the world. Anything that's not an exact copy (which is hard to do if you're not God), has a point of view, which gives it value.

That the average person hasn't thought about this doesn't mean it couldn't become a thing in the future. People do value authenticity and genuine things, though I agree the particulars aren't relevant in a lot of cases.

This is a (very expensive!) toy camera, but I could see traditional camera companies like Fujifilm, Canon, etc, incorporating this tech later down the line.

Nit, but there are reasons Canon and Nikon will sell you cameras that sign the pictures with their keys already. Even if they have been shown insecure in specific implementations the market is very much there.

Ten years ago in the NYC art market this was also true in a niche but very real audience. I think the NFT wave burnt that out completely.

“You will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads. You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets 10,000 likes on Instagram. You will be happy when you have transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.”

― Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet , Shortened version of the many-paragraphs-long quote found on: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10913632-you-will-be-happy-...

You can definitely get back into it. Just have fun, don't do it for anyone (that goes with any art).

A few hours later, YouTube suggested me this video: Psychology of People Who Don't Post their Photos on Social Media

Not some big revelations, but an interesting perspective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGx_cmEH8Lw

AI won't replace that, just creates an alternative way to generate content without needing to be physically present somewhere.

But at the same time it's true that some vital public activities aren't rewarded by the system atm. Eg. quality journalism, family rearing, open source, etc. Often that's an issue of privatized costs and socialized rewards. Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal.

But aren't you now feeding back to the system? Why would there need to be a financial reward and incentive for everything?

I do realize "contributing free value" is perceived by some as free value a third party can capture and financially profit from" which might the reason for thinking of how to then cycle some of that value back?

Tabloid press is fantastically profitable, but fake news over time will erode a great deal of social trust.

Closed source software might be individually advantageous but collectively holds back industrial progress. It's a similar reason to why patents were first introduced for physical goods.

And yes people voluntarily without kids should have to pay significantly more social contributions.

I don't know anyone who understand economics would say this, unless you're talking about very specific meanings of 'value'. I'm not trying to be pedantic, I know what you mean, but these comments are not insightful or helpful.

The problem with the linked product is it’s basically DRM with a baked in encryption key. And we have seen time and time again that with enough effort, it’s always been possible to extract that key.

People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop, even if they point and say eww when it's discussed. Some people care, and some additional people pretend they care, but it just isn't a real issue that is driving behavior. Putting aside (for now) the idea of misinformation, slop is socially problematic when it puts artists out of work, but social media slop is just a new, sadder, form of entertainment that is generally not replacing the work of an artist. People have been warning about the downfall of society with each new mode of entertainment forever. Instagram or TikTok don't need to remove slop, and people won't care after they acclimate.

Misinformation and "trickery" is a real and horrific threat to society. It predates AI slop, but it's exponentially easier now. This camera, or something else with the same goal, could maybe provide some level of social or journalistic relief to that issue. The problem, of course, is that this assumes that we're OK with letting something be "real" only when someone can remember to bring a specialty camera. The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.

I'd say we've already mostly lost that due to AI. We might gain it back if cryptographic camera signatures become commonplace (and aren't too easy too crack).

I fear, your statement is impossible to be denied its validity, when "Tung Tung Tung Sahur"-Trading-Cards and "Tralalero Tralala"-T-Shirts are a thing.

I think this is true. In general I think enough population of the market actually does not care about quality as long as it exceeds a certain limited threshold.

There's always been market for sub-par product. That's one of the features of the market I think. You can always find what is the cheapest, lowest quality offering you can sell at a profit.

That said in theory TPMs are proof against this: putting that to the test at scale, publicly, would be quite useful.

I fully agree, I just don't know how that could work.

I think GenAI will kill the internet as we know it. The smart thing is (and always has been) to be online less and build real connections to real people offline.

True.

> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.

There’s a market for social media that bans slop, period. I don’t think it matters how it was made.

Also, that market may not be large. Yes, people prefer quality, but (how much) are they willing to pay for it?

Imagine going to the solicitors with lots of documents that they need copies of. If they are making scans themselves then that is all the proof they need. If an assistant has copied that important certificate, then that copy is all that is needed for normal legal services. The Roc Camera would not be helpful in this regard, even if it had some magic means of scanning A4 pages.

In a serious solicitor interaction there will be forms that need to be signed and witnessed. These important documents then need to go in the post. In theory, the client could just whip out their Roc Camera and... But who is going to buy a Roc Camera when a stamp will do the job?

Maybe you might if you have a lot of photos to take for 'evidence', for example, of the condition of a house before work is done, or after it is done. However, nobody is asking for this so there is no compulsion to get the Roc Camera when the camera on your phone suffices for the needs of the real world.

The value is for documenting history and being able to *prove* something happened (eg for lawsuits, criminal cases, security, etc).

Imagine the president wants to deliver a video message. Was it authentic or AI generated? If it was filmed with this camera, the population can verify.

I fear (channeling a brave new world) that they simply will not care.