something interesting about street photography

the following is from a letter of a friend, a girl I just knew last week who was paying an interview to Caltech as admitted graduate student. she is Prinstone physics major but likes photography and pocesses original perspective in shooting pictures. her pictures can be seen here:

http://www.princeton.edu/~feiwang/photo_album/studio.htm

I posted it here without her permission. hope she doesn't mind:P
(I really want to go to Huntington garden to see the spring there after seeing her pictures. why not? it is free tomorrow!!)


"First, from the point of view of a photographer, I wish I do not have to ask for a permission. See the problem is, I don't want to disturb the natural state of my object for aesthetic reasons, so it is very necessary to be sneaky :) Oftentimes there is a great moment, but I'd ruin it if I asked for a permission before I raised the camera. Although,
no matter how sneaky I am, the scene always has to be affected by the act of my taking this picture to some extent, asking for a permission is incurring a promise to completely ruin the natural state. If I asked for permissions beforehand, the the snapshots would have become posed portraits, which is much less ideal to me (oh, yeah, people are
so much more interesting when they are not posing). Some photographers even consider it cheating (i.e. violating the ethical code of photojournalism/street photography) to ask your objects to cooperate with you in shots that are supposed to be candid. I guess I can ask for permissions afterwards, but that would just be hypocritical, 'cause I already took the pictures. I can't erase them from my film now even if the people don't grant me permissions! hmm...
digital is another case... but that's not the point, hehe.
(BTW, Somehow it makes me understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principle a lot better :P - the object you are observing has to be changed by the act of your observing/recording. I think this is absolutely stunning how sophisticated theories in science are just some everyday commonsence! but I probably digressed a bit too far :P )

"I did discuss with some professional street photographers about this issue too. my understanding it, the law allows one to take pictures of almost everything that is displayed in public, as long as the pictures are for personal/non-commercial/non-harmful use. now that it is legal, weather it is ethical is another question."