photo op!

a regular snapaholic with my camera, i often worry if my photo-crazy tendencies while traveling interfere with my hope of always being a respectful and courteous visitor to my host country. after all, the last thing i want is for the camera around my neck to place me in the same category as the fat balding loud sex tourists still not knowing a word of Thai and eating at Yorkie’s best british pies …



a provocative college geography class taken at university of canterbury in new zealand explored the topic of photography as a unique aspect of travel. of course everyone wants photos of the locals when they visit an exotic country. i do too. but the etiquette behind openly photographing someone gets complicated. do you ask first? do you offer payment? do you try to sneak a pic from across the street? or is your camera not even an appropriate accessory for the setting at all? people of some cultures are insulted by someone gawking and taking photos of them simply because they look different. people of some cultures will gladly pose, but then expect payment. some would be insulted by payment. some even have a visceral fear of the camera, because a photo will capture a piece of their soul…


because of these vast differences among cultures, and even the individual differences in opinion that, of course ,exist among the individuals within a culture, i am very wary of taking photos of people directly.


today, however, something funny happened. here i am, on my daily walk home from the beach after watching the sunset and sampling the array of cheap street foodies that roll by on their mobile kitchen carts. i must clearly be looking extra white, foreign, and out-of-place. i don’t know if it’s my semi-sunburned skin or my bright red sundress, but something has made me hear the word “farang” an awful lot more than usual. then, out of nowhere, a middle aged woman i am passing on the fairly crowded beach sidewalk looks at me with pure excitement etched on her face. “farang, farang!!!” she yells excitedly, camera in hand. i am instantly surrounded by other middle-aged thai men and women, seemingly her friends and family that she is dining with on the beach. men on either side of me are smiling at the woman’s camera, which she is happily snapping away. so what could i do? i too smile widely in the camera’s direction, much to the amusement of the crowd of thais congregating in their comparative shortness at my shoulders. the groups shift, so that everyone gets their turn with the apparently very silly looking farang girl. i even put my arm around my last portraitmate, a thai woman, probably mid-thirties, who looks slightly embarrassed by the actions of her companions, yet still excited for the photo op.


i walk away still smiling from such a blunt and unexpected perspective-shifting experience on an issue that i have been muddling over in my mind for years. true, these people didn’t have the english knowledge to actually ask me to take a photo with them. but my clear happy acceptance of their gestures and points at the camera would have washed away any reluctance (if they had any…) nor did i get a proper “thank you” for my modeling services (in fact, i said thank you to them, just because i didn’t know how else to end such a strange ordeal…) but i clearly wasn’t bothered by that either, happy to provide my silly sunburned farang look if it was needed to complete the ultimate pattaya weekend photo op for that family (from god knows what part of the remote hills of thailand they came from, given such excitement at seeing a westerner…).