Happy Friday!
I have black and white images for you today. I didn’t have any lunch meetings yesterday and the people I asked if they wanted to go to lunch all had other plans so I took my favorite camera with me and drove through the countryside. It is one of my favorite things to do.
Granted the light isn’t always the best at that time of day but then you change your view-point on what to shoot in relation to the lighting conditions.
I was stopped along a public road taking images with the Nikon 750 fitted with the Nikon 80 – 400 mm lens. I tell you that only because the lens is big and heavy and it is obviously for doing more than just taking a point and shoot photograph.
As I was taking some photographs of this old (seemingly abandoned) structure a man pulled up on a motorcycle and when I acknowledged his presence he said, “What are you taking a picture of?”
Now it’s part of my job over the last 25 years to read people and their body language and I made an instant evaluation that his question was confrontational.
I responded with the most indignant tone I could find and raised the camera and said, “I’m a photographer!” It was not my finest hour. I have taught leadership classes for years and one of the things I try to impart on the participants is that there is a space between stimulus and response for us to choose our response.
Instead of smiling, introducing myself, and giving him one of my photography cards I chose to be equally confrontational. I was not happy with my response. He said “Okay” and drove on. I got back in my car and after having a stern conversation with myself I decided to see if I could catch up to him or find his motorcycle parked at one of the farms along the road. I wanted to apologize and explain my knee jerk (heavy emphases on the jerk) reaction and handle it correctly.
Life is a journey and if we’re lucky we get to learn from our mistakes. I still feel bad about it this morning. I could blame the stress of the morning on my reaction but in actuality it was simply me not taking the time to evaluate, think it though, and choose the proper response.
Even if my assessment of his confrontational interaction to me was correct I had the opportunity to put his mind at ease, make a possible friend, and share my passion for photography with someone new. 😦
That’s it for today.
Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
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