Under the Arch

I've had a couple of BlogHer posts in my draft file for days now but I can't seem to get anywhere with them, so I'm going to a share a little self-contained story with you from that weekend. The Shutter Sisters sponsored a photo walk after the Photography session and I went, hoping to see a little more of this city that I was visiting. I spotted a few people I knew in the crowd, Bossy and Y among them, but most of the women were strangers to me. We split into groups and descended on the city like a flock of very strange looking birds, cameras attached to our faces. My group voted to head for Chinatown and we wandered, shooting as we walked, though it wasn't long before I lost most of the group. I found myself wandering  with two lovely women that I'd never met before, Megan and Jennifer, and we decided to head downhill to the financial district and then back up to Union Square. We were having a great time snapping away when we came upon a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. He asked us to take his photo and though we weren't supposed to take pictures of people for the photo walk, it seemed easier to take a quick photo to make him happy than to argue and explain what we were doing. (The purpose of the photo walk was to compile a collection of photos to be used later in a book. Without a photo release from the man, we couldn't submit his photo for the book.) The three of us took his photo and started to walk on when another man passed us by on the sidewalk and almost immediately started yelling at us for taking advantage of a homeless man, taking his photo without paying him, then proceeded to very loudly call us any number of foul names, including worthless whores and tramps. I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly used to hostility from complete strangers, but after the initial shock I got really angry and informed the loud-mouthed moron that the man had asked us to take his picture and I was hardly going to worry about what some idiot carrying a boom box (!) thought of me. (Ok, I said the first part, not the second, but I did say it after he stomped off.) We kept walking and after about half a block I turned to Megan and Jennifer and said, "Hey guys. You know what just happened? We just got trolled! In person!" So, now, every time a troll bothers you on the internet, just picture a badly dressed, psychotic homeless man carrying a boom box on his shoulder ala 1984, and remember, his opinion doesn't matter. ;)

He made us wait for him to put on the hat and sunglasses, then posed before he asked us to go ahead and shoot.