I was always puzzled by this underlying logic. Just how is taking pictures in public “endangering” children? And vice versa, not taking “saving” them?
The underlying logic is simple, as you know, and not contentious unless one chooses to make it so just for the sake of argument.
The problem, in the public snapping of them, lies in the step
after the snapping: where the hell do the pix go, how are they used and to which wish lists do they become appended? Possibilities for later?
Personally, I can think of no reason why I would
want to photograph a child not my own. There may be the odd HC-B or Ronis moment when something cute happens, but I'd rather pass and think of the mother if she's photogenic.
I have to admit that successfully snapping a pretty adult without permission does seem to me to be a trophy of sorts; I don't think it's even sexually motivated - it hardly causes me sleepless nights at my age - but definitely has something to do with getting away with something stealthy; yeah, that's the buzz: getting one over the established modes of public conduct. That said, I never feel any desire to shoot males. Never. Not even those I was paid to shoot - I hated it. I didn't know how to talk to them; I didn't and don't give a shit about sport, so all casual, pointless male conversational ice-brealers were beyond me.
I think I have two unknown-male shots in my website: one of an old guy hurrying past, head down, which I think I shot to check out if I could work my camera's af features, and another shot of an equally old guy looking at a baby-like thing in a window, which came across to me as a kind of metaphor for birth and death.
Yes, I photographed some musos, but they were regular players I got to know through the cameras, and I wasn't trying to photograph them as much as their instruments and the music, a project just as useless as Annie Leibovitz declared the fate of dance photography: you can't photograph dance. I think she's right. It's about time, not acrobatics per se; I said that bit, not she. I think it was what she was alluding to, but I might be mistaken.