I may never do street photography

[Bikerider]

I have seen street photography done without being invasive. A lot of strangers on the street will even happily pose in weird ways if you ask them. And many will give the okay AFTER you have taken the photo, if you just introduce yourself and ask.

The worst is the people who photograph poor or homeless people - trying to capitalize off of someone else's misfortune, but claiming in their vanity that they just want to bring "awareness." They are rude, vain, and liars.

It is legal. But it is also legal for me to stand outside your house every morning and follow you to work.

Except in UK. Such behaviour could result in arrest and an appearance in court under S5 of the Public Order Act of 1986 for causing Alarm, Harassment or Distress, or if speech were also involved then the Harassment Act of 1996 could be invoked with a much heavier penalty.

 

[YellowPangolin]

This is why I don't take my camera out to the streets, there are far too many criminals roaming about. Not to mention that most people dress sloppy. I take photos of cities and of landscapes that are impressive. Forget people. People are relatively low value photographic subjects unless you know them personally and even then, you see them almost every day.

 

[Agulliver]

Certainly the UK has laws which are designed to prevent both harassment and stalking. Yet we also have the specific right to photograph anything and anyone that can be seen from a public place. Not for us restrictions on photographing members of the public, celebrities, emergency workers, government buildings etc. All fair game if visible from a public place. I am given to understand that in some countries it is actually illegal to photograph police officers!

Honestly it bothers me not if people dress "sloppy". That's the moment as I experience it. I'm actually more likely to photograph scenes where people are dressed other than "average"....lots of suits or lots of jeans....or lots of short skirts....for example. A group of people in reasonably decent trousers and shirts is less interesting than the unusual.

Street photography at the moment is....unusual. I've taken a little Olympus Mju on my little walks to go shopping recently. What I am shooting is closed pubs, people queuing the required 2m apart outside shops, roundabouts that are usually teaming with cars standing almost devoid of traffic...signs reminding us to practice "social distancing"....my own little document of these weird times.