How to avoid negative confrontation.

I always love some positive confrontation. I’m talking about the people who get mad at us for photographing in public space.

How do you prevent negative confrontation?

Stick with me because this is going to be different than probably what you’ve heard before.

This is all in the mind, right?

Avoiding confrontation is a mindset. And I’m going to link this back to the magazine mindset.

This is how you avoid confrontation.

First, I think we as photographers have to have a clear understanding of why we’re doing this thing that we do every day.

We have to have a clear understanding.

We have to be confident that when we’re out here taking photos, we know why.

It’s as simple as that.

We have to know why.

And what’s that do for us?

That makes it so we appear to the world more confident.

When I’m walking in this world, I have a mission. I have a goal.

I know that every time I go out with this rectangular box, my goal is to put one or two photographs in the magazine.

That is my expectation and my goal.

Every time I click the shutter, I want to put one of those photos in my Survey magazine.

Usually it doesn’t happen. It’s a very low percentage, but that’s my goal.

What this allows me to do is move through this world with a purpose.

Instead of just being like, “I don’t know why I’m shooting,” now I know why.

So if somebody does get mad at me, which really doesn’t happen anymore, by the way, I can calmly tell the person exactly what I’m doing.

It used to happen all the time, and it probably directly relates to this because I didn’t have a purpose with my photography before. I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was just exploring.

So if I were to get confronted now, I can just calmly tell the person exactly what I’m doing.

I’ve got something going on in here. Little special event. Got to go check out the special event.

So I can now calmly explain to the person who’s very upset with me over taking the photo what I’m doing with it.

And I think, in general, Americans are very open to being photographed.

But the thing is, with all the socials going on, all these prank videos, and all the negative stuff we see in public, I think Americans, rightly so, are very suspicious of why anybody would be photographing them.

And it’s totally understandable.

We see a lot of stuff on social, and people just want to know what you’re doing.

So if you have a clear mission and a clear goal of what to do with your photography, I think generally speaking, people in this country will be like, “Oh yeah, that’s cool.”

And that’ll just be it.

You just move on with your life.

And if they’re not cool with it and they don’t understand, or whatever, they’re just having a bad day and they want to get all mad, just delete the photo and move on.

Look at that. That’s cool.

That little silhouette.

Silhouette.

Yeah. Yeah. Silhouette.

Get that silhouette, boy.

Got another silhouette.

Damn. This is a nice little spot.

Nice little spot here.

So yeah, if they get mad, just delete the photo and move on.

Look, if you don’t want to delete the photo because someone’s mad, I get it.

It’s the First Amendment. Whatever.

I’m not even talking about legally. We all know we have the legal right to do it.

But here’s the thing.

You should never be mad about losing a photograph because the goal is to take as many photographs as possible.

We should be taking so many photographs as a street photographer that it doesn’t matter if we miss a shot or we have to delete one just to ease a negative confrontation in our life.

Little birds. They’re flying.

Little pigeons are flying.

So anyways, that’s how I link it back to the magazine mindset.

Yeah, we’ve got something going on here.

That’s how I link it back to the magazine mindset.

I have my goal and my purpose.

It makes me a more confident person when I’m out here shooting.

I can tell anybody what I’m doing.

I have nothing to hide.

I could even pull up my website and show them exactly what I’m doing with the work if they want to know.

So it just helps ease tensions on the street.

For me, I know when I first started, I was getting confronted a lot because I was out there like Bruce Gilden and I was just being stupid.

You could be like Bruce Gilden out here and probably still be okay with the negative confrontation because you still have a purpose, like Bruce did.

But I didn’t know that when I was photographing like Bruce.

I was just up in people’s faces, flashing them, causing a disturbance, and I didn’t even know why I was doing it.

So yeah, moral of the story: just know why the hell you’re doing the thing.

You’ll be a lot more confident moving around in this world, and you’ll be able to explain to anybody what the hell you’re actually doing out here.

And Americans will accept you just how you are.