Pictures

When I was in Thailand, I noticed that a lot of young people, particularly girls, would make a "V" with their fingers when taking a picture. Personally, I thought it looks kind of stupid. What does the "V" stand for? Does it mean victory, voyeur, vacuum (as between the ears), vixen or vapid? I think I find it particularly irritating because I usually see that pose while I wait for them to finish their picture so I can take mine or walk past.

It brings to mind an image of Richard Nixon standing their with his arms above his head sporting the double victory sign. Speaking of Nixon, the Chinese are much more irritating when it comes to photography. (For those of you not understanding the Nixon/China connection, I was referring to the famous statement that "Only Nixon could go to China." President Nixon made great strides in improving strained U.S. and Chinese relations. The reason for the quote was that Nixon's strong anti-communist standing made him largely immune to criticisms for warming relations with a communist powers. )

In any case, the v sign is very popular in Hong Kong. What is worse, however, is the tendency of people to take pictures of everything. I couldn't count the number of people holding their cameras over their head taking pictures of the fireworks. I'm not an expert, but given the type of cameras often used, I can't imagine that many got good pictures. Perhaps I'm getting to be a bit of a photo snob, but do you really need 87 pictures of the fireworks. Are you every going to look at them.

Even worse than the pictures of fireworks was pictures in gift shops. People were taking posing in the gift shop taking pictures. Its not like there was anything special in the gift shop. Imagine just walking in a store and posing for pictures everywhere. Countless moms had their child hold up some item while they snapped pictures. Other people were posing in front of a shelf of merchandise. Some people were just taking pictures of stuff in the gift shop. One lady was rearranging teddy bears on a shelf to get the perfect shot.

As a general rule, I try to be respectful when people are taking pictures. I try not to walk in front of people as they are taking pictures, either by waiting or walking around them. I had to modify my policy a bit in Hong Kong. I made my choice on a case by case basis. Usually I still deferred, but if your picture took a long time, or you were blocking an enormous area (i.e., trying to take a picture of someone 25 feet away blocking the entire main walkway), I wouldn't break stride. I deemed all pictures taken in a gift shop as fair game for interruption. Don't get me wrong, I didn't intentionally jump into the picture, I just wouldn't do anything to avoid it.

The other "rule" I made for myself was regarding video cameras. When a guy is walking around with video camera filming continuously, I'm not going to make an effort to stay out of my way. Especially for the jack ass who walked right into my shot. In his case, I intentionally got the back of my head into his shot for a few seconds.

So, am I a hater for my picture interuptus philosophy? Nah, just having fun.

Oh, the one bad thing. I actually have a picture of my son with the v pose. /sigh