I'll readily admit that over the years I've flirted with the disappearing camera fantasy. I've bought and used small, compact, fixed lens cameras. Tried my hand at all manner of less bulky Leica rangefinder cameras. Experimented with Fuji's X100 series of cameras and worked at looking personally low profile. Trying to disappear into the wavy chaos of every day life. Keeping my images as "pure" a biopsy of everyday life as I could.
But now it's all for naught. David Ingram has taught me the new way of the camera going forward. It's now better to stick out and embrace the rarity of using a large, imposing and ungainly camera with an equally obvious lens instead of trying to hide behind...tiny-ness and overt discretion. Or sneakiness. Let me explain.
Fifteen years or so ago lots of people were extremely passionate about their hobbies of photography. Anywhere you turned in a prosperous city you could look through a crowd and see all manner of cameras festooned over shoulders, the more paranoid users draping them in a cross body style, some with weird straps that left cameras spinning and careening around aimlessly at the end of a tether, and so on. Nearly every camera had a zoom lens of some sort in front of it. Not lenses designed for stealth or concealment but big, old honkers with relatively fast apertures and long zoom ranges.
At the time the general public was used to seeing legions of camera toters in public places and so it mostly went unremarked. Then the market for cameras and the desire to use cameras started to decline and the decline accelerated year-by-year. By the time Covid arrived obvious camera users mostly retreated from public spaces, paranoia bubbled among the general populace, and more ardent photographers became obsessed with attaining greater and greater levels of invisibility. And now it's 2025 and while gazillions of people are taking ogtilliondy-trillion smartphone photo images per year traditional, big cameras and zooms have more or less disappeared entirely from public life in all but the most touristy areas in modern life.
The camouflage of cameras, just being small, black and bereft of the ability to change lenses, has lost its power. Any camera of any make or size, except for the phones, is now such an oddity on most city streets (at least here in Texas) that its very rarity makes it stand out and declare itself. Those of us wielding what used to be "safe" street cameras find that we can no longer hide behind the invisibility of the small cameras because...nobody really cares about what kind of camera you are using and, in fact, have come to see the small, traditional camera as a boring reminder of a time when cameras could only take photographs and could not be pressed into the work of staying in touch, via TikTok videos, with your crazy aunt Marge who mostly spends the day doomscrolling. Nobody takes single use cameras seriously anymore and your attempt be be stealthy and move through a scene like a Ninja while making quickly grabbed, sneaky street shots of strangers is seen as more of a nuisance or invasion of privacy than ever before. Trying to be too stealthy is conflated with something more sinister. Being stalked by a potential sociopath --- maybe?
Enter David. He's a big guy. A person near my age. He dresses casually. He's a retired economist. And he spends time around town shooting whatever catches his eye. But the thing that makes David, as a photographer, stand out to me is the way he seem to magnetically attract all manner of human subjects into the orbit of his camera where he catches them without subterfuge or guile. A process that no one seems to object to or question. His secret? According to him it's two things. First, you can always ask people if you may photograph them, and the more people you ask the greater your odds of getting a bunch of "yes" responses. But second and equally important is the obviousness of his presentation.
He uses a big, full sized, current Canon camera and is mostly seen shooting with a huge, fast 85mm lens. It's a combo that gives the Leica SL2 and the big Leica zoom a run for its money when it comes to size and weight!!! And it's a rig that David is never trying to hide or conceal in anyway. It's all right out in the open. Which leads curious people to drop by his usual table at Jo's Coffee and ask him all sorts of questions. "What are you shooting today?" "Are you a professional?" "Are you getting some great shots?" "Is that camera digital or film?" And my favorite: "Hey! Would you take our picture???" By eliminating the artistic pretense of subtle hiding in favor of overt display David is doing away with the thought that everyone who has ever realized that they are being stalked and surreptitiously photograph has. Which is: "What the hell is that weirdo doing and why does he seem focused on me, or my kids, or my hot spouse? And why is he trying so hard to hide his intentions if he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong?"
The old Henri Cartier Bresson/Heisenberg Theory of shooting was different in one sense from today's hit-and-run wannabe Ninjas. While today's Ninja-ettes are trying to escape frightening, potential confrontation by eluding detection HCB was trying to make sure that the presence of the camera didn't alter the scene by making people conscious that they were part of a scene being captured. I know it feels like a small distinction but I don't think HCB was driven by fear or greed as much as not having the butterfly wing flutter of observation potentially change the things he wanted us to see.
The difference between HCB's time and that of the current street shooter being that the small camera, being operated out on the streets in the 1930s-1950s was very much a novelty at the time. There was no general awareness among the regular people in the streets that cameras had been emancipated from traditional studios and were being pressed into recording life as it flowed. It was a real change and the investment of each frame far more dear. To be photographed was, in a sense, to be made quite special. Or at least a subject who realized back then that they were being photographed imagined so.
HCB was capturing life in the street for what seemed like the very first time. "Shooters" now are following paths so promiscuously and repeatedly already followed these days that one wonders if anything in the genre will ever be perceived as new again. Everyone seems to be chasing the same kinds of images; converging at the same geography, looking for the archetypes they've already seen time and again. And the contemporary "subjects" of these photographs; the people captured, wonder just why they have become sometimes unwilling collaborators in the routine dance of modern photography. The loss of privacy having exponentially more bad effects for individuals now than in the past. And dangerous from so many different vectors.
David has tossed the paradigm on its head and is embracing its opposite; a full complicity between shooter and subject. A clear declaration of intent. Issuing an invitation to the dance. And it feels nice. I've watched groups, like bridal parties, or office mates out for professional lunches be greeted by David and somehow have seen the groups quickly getting around to asking David If he will photograph them. They are asking a favor. They are part of an equation that works for both sides. David always gladly complies. Instagram addresses are exchanged afterwards. David follows up.
He and I talked at length one day and he explained that by making himself obviously open to the process, and to the people, he doesn't experience the queasy feelings of paranoia or rejection more secretive photographers seem to feel. He's a regular visitor to the area and so are a number of his previous subjects. They greet David. They pose again for his camera. They inveigle friends into participating.
And David has a lot of fun doing it.
I decided to test his method yesterday and brought my biggest and most obvious camera and lens with me. An SL2 and the big zoom lens. Five pounds of obviousness. I could not have been more obvious unless I had been dragging around a big ass camera bag, a khaki photographer's vest with many pockets, and a Tilley hat.
The result? I found that I could shoot with abandon and rather than people acting put off by being photographed, they expected it. And not just a "one you are done" quick shoot. I found people smiled for a couple frames and then ignored the rig and allowed to me to shoot multiple more frames till I got what I wanted. There was no way to hide the camera as I walked around but it didn't matter. Now I was just an old duffer with a hobby to occupy time instead of a squirrelly character with a hidden agenda. And that was a much cleaner and more productive way to operate.
Never too old to learn new stuff. Cultural norms change. Art forms evolve. One just needs to pay attention.
This post approved by the Consortium of Mannquins and Incredibly Stable Constructs.
