The Photographer

While walking down 18th Street today, I see a hipster in a red and white striped shirt, skinny jeans and thick black frame horn rimmed glasses. My first impression was, "Hey! I found Waldo!" He was only missing the hat. I'm guessing he was just shy of 30 years old. He was carrying a fancy digital SLR camera. This is a common site because A. it was right down the street from a camera store, and B. it's New York City. People like that are all over the place.

What made this encounter interesting was that his person was walking along side an older woman. She was maybe 45-50. They weren't together, which was obvious. She was on her phone and he was examining the camera in his hand. When I first saw the pair, they were maybe 25 yards ahead, walking towards me. While walking, the hipster slowly got closer and closer to the woman. She was engrossed in her phone conversation that she didn't notice him. When they were only about 5 feet in front of me, the hipster turned his camera towards the woman's face and I heard the familiar *click* of the shutter. He then looked back at the screen on his camera and took a step sideways and I passed between the woman and the hipster. I looked back to see if the woman noticed anything, but she was still talking on the phone and the hipster was still looking at the back of his camera, slowly diverging from his position next to the woman.

My first thought was that this dude is a major creep. What kind of pervert takes pictures of unsuspecting women? Does he do this all the time? He seemed to be comfortable stealing this picture. It was almost second nature. I almost felt used when he sidestepped and went around me. It separated him from the woman so if she suspected anything she wouldn't have noticed the camera, she would have noticed him moving to the side so I could pass.

An instant later, I tried to see what he found so interesting about this woman that he wanted to take a picture. She wasn't what most people would consider attractive, she was talking on the phone in a very complaining type of voice, and it sounded like she's been a smoker for 25 years. Overall, she was average. There was nothing that I noticed that made this woman stand out. Perhaps to the hipster, she was more interesting. Maybe he could hear her conversation or he saw her do something that intrigued him and he just wanted to capture that moment.

My next instinctual reaction, I should add that all these reactions happened in less than 3 seconds, was that he just wanted to capture a candid image of people he encounters on the street. She could have just been in the right place at the right time for him to test how well pictures turn out while walking next to an unsuspecting model. People are fascinating in their own intimate ways. At first, I thought it was kind of weird, but then I realized something...

I'm doing that exact same thing.