Rights ? and wrongs

Rights – and wrongs

A sunny afternoon, and so I went for a walk with my cameras and some lenses: it’s what I do at present. A new drive just up the road had light glancing off it, and looking rather impressive, so I dialled in some negative compensation, and took a shot.

And I wandered on towards the canal – and within around 90 seconds, there was a man behind me, slightly agitated (so that he was standing out in the carriageway of a busy road to keep social distance, holding his mobile phone up (I reckon he was recording me and our conversation) and asking why I was photographing his drive, and saying something about deleting the picture. ‘It’s pretty’ I said.

Calming down slowly, he asked why I had photographed his house, and it became clear that what was worrying him was that his children were playing near a front window, and he was keen to protect them from marauding photographers. I switched on the camera, and held it out so that he could see the image on the screen – I think we maintained six feet apart, with camera and mobile both held at arm’s length.

It must have looked like a modern version from a cowboy movie, though considerably more good-natured. Included in the conversation was my address, and we parted on good terms. Later in the evening, the doorbell rang: same chap, along with a small boy – he’d come to check that the person he’d seen earlier had been telling the truth about where he lived.

Just a quick question – are you feeling all shirty and offended on my part? Or, indeed, can you not believe my foolishness in photographing somebody else’s drive? I actually reckon that we both did pretty well: he is concerned for his children’s safety, and I knew that I had done nothing to be ashamed of, so I was open and honest. Were it not for the virus, we’d have closed our second meeting by shaking hands… And I hope that we will be meeting again, and establishing the sort of relationship that ought to exist between people who live on the same street.