Where Can and Do I Take Pictures of People?

Photographs, Privacy, Travel

From experience, I have learned that I can take pictures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I could not take pictures in some museums in Hungary.  I can take pictures in an airplane, and a subway.

DSC07077 This out-of-focus picture is a stand-in for a picture that I wanted to take of a fairly rare site, on the subway, that of a family of five with a very cute, little, four-year old girl, her mother, father, and two older sisters.  I wanted to take a picture of the entire family, but somebody suggested that you cannot take pictures on a subway.  I took only a very out of  focus picture of the little girl, and then deleted it.  But I later took photographs of people on a subway that I did not intend to talk about in this blog.   So it is legal.

DSC07362  This is a photograph from an airplane window.  I do not take photographs of people on an airplane, though probably I could do so legally.  I consider that this invades their privacy.

So where can I take pictures?:

  • In a variety of public places

Where do I take pictures of people?:

  • In many places, but I often leave out the people
  • And often I do not take them, even when I want to talk about them
  • Because I consider that this invades their privacy

 

Context, An Ever-changing Aspect of Experience

Brain, Experience, Life, Philosophy, Thought,

DSC06736 Here is a house in the sun, with clouds in the background sky.   There are palm and other tree in front of, and around, it.  There are also curbs and a sidewalk in front of it.  This is part of the context of this house.  Another part of the context of the house might be who lives in it.

For the person who lives in it, the house and everything outside it, is part of his context, and another part of that person’s context is his past in that house, and indeed the entirety of his past,  and everything he or she ever experienced, whether remembered or not.  They say that the brain bears traces of everything, even that which is seemingly forgotten.  These things in the past ,  and everything which we experience  in the present, are part of each individual’s context, and everybody on earth has a different one.

Not only do we have different sets of eyes, ears, taste buds, nose sensory organs, and skin sensations, we each have absolutely unique combinations of genes with which our bodies respond to our  environment, physically, and mentally, continually adding to our contexts, and our experience of it.  On top of that, our physical a and emotional experiences change over time from birth, through growth, maturity, decline, and death.

I have my unique, immediate, mental context, and you have yours

Our contexts are never the same as they were even an instant before.  This is why we “shall never pass this way again.”

Nice Thoughts

Thought

IMG_20150802_191924 This low resolution photograph suggests the  following:

  • Follow your heart
  • Create peace
  • Fall in love
  • Dream big
  • Show gratitude
  • Discover your passion
  • Be spontaneous
  • Believe in yourself
  • Your life is now

This advice, always in vogue, graced the  wall of a restaurant.  These are nice thoughts, which each of us, as individuals, can cultivate.

Recently I received and email with this title, and I pictured the sender sitting in home space sending me some nice thoughts.  This amplified nice thoughts in me.  I followed up with a return email, and amplifying “nice thoughts” in some small circles.

I spoke with somebody yesterday who meditates.  I think meditation probably can help one to harness the above beneficial “nice thought” aspects of our minds.