For years, I was too retiring to ask to stand a stranger’s picture. Normally, I’m not at all guarded. I’ll talk to anyone. But stick a camera in my relief and I would become horribly self-intentional. I thought it a bit impertinent to ask to take someone’s fill someone in. After all, I wasn’t a “real” photographer but one a hobbyist.

I did act photographs of people who were uninformed. Some were provocative pictures, I tinge, that captured moments or moods. They were nugatory slices of real, unrehearsed and unself-conscious way of life. I contrive such pictures have an mighty city in any photographer’s repertoire, but I am not discussing those here.

Then I know up on various ways that street photographers took pictures without being noticed. These surreptitious shots did not appeal to me, though, because they seemed a bit sneaky. I wanted either pictures of people quite unaware, or pictures of people who were totally aware. I did not want to furtively snap images of people who did not want their pictures entranced.
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