too shy to try

yesterday i was walking along the thames south bank, crowded with every sort of people. the weather was great. not london-great, really great. and as i was looking around and visually exploring all different facets of humanity, i found the perfect shot. the perfect guy and the perfect shot. well, not in absolute terms. i mean, for sure it wouldn't have been the best photo of the year, not even of the week or day or hour, but still for my standards... it was the perfect shot.

take out my camera, start playing with the settings, don't even need to frame - it was already the perfect shot. but i take too long. i always take too long. what can i say, i'm just a beginner. too long. enough for him to spot me. to notice something's going on, even though i'm kind of behind him. still he stays there, but looks weird, moves his book. and there it is. PANIC.

i panicked. as i always do when i feel i'm intruding. a theatre director once told me i seem to walk through the world without wanting to bother a single human being. never thought about that before, but kind of makes sense. i don't like to impose my presence. pathologically shy. and with a camera, that's pretty difficult. especially when your favourite subject are people. and you end up shooting at buildings, landscapes, everything but people. because you're shy.

so that's what happened. he noticed. surely didn't come there and ripped my camera off insulting me. he just (looked like he) noticed. and i panicked. and backed away. didn't shoot. walked a few steps away, standing by the river, waiting for time to go by. basically waiting for him to leave his bench. waiting for the perfect shot to dissolve, and for regret to settle in.

regret. regret i didn't shoot. regret i'm freaking shy. regret that in the end, i won't have the perfect photo. probably it wouldn't have come out the way i saw it, i'm not half that good. but still. i could have had it, and checked how bad it would have come. upset and disappointed, i start walking again. after all i was heading to tate modern.

and funnily enough, besides the dada exhibit i was expecting to find, a new one just opened a couple of days ago...
Street & Studio - An Urban History of Photography
hahaha

amazing. well, not everything, but most of the stuff. simply amazing. a collection of pictures from the end of XIX century to present day. i have to admit that, clearly, i didn't find (most of) the studio pictures extremely exciting. but the street ones... awesome. a photography class couldn't teach you more.

or serve as inspiration. just an hour ago i had panicked while intruding into someone else's day. hanging on the walls, i was now acknowledging hundreds of intrusions. intrusions telling stories, narrating bits of history. history from people's point of view. street history.

now, i'm not that ambitious. being shy, can't possibly have ambitions. but not only for ambition, even just for fun, shyness isn't a light load to carry around. should properly dispose of it one of these days. at least some of it.

here's not my favourite picture of the exhibit, but the comment... pretty much what i needed to read:
"Far off, amongst the walkers, she stands out like a golden pheasant in a hen house. She approaches... I'm shy, trembling a little. Twenty meters... ten meters... eight... six... and click! The shutter of my big camera makes so much noise that the lady jumps almost as much as I do. It doesn't matter a bit, except to the man with a loud voice accompanying her who, with a furious look, starts to get hold of me... What does it matter, though, all that counts is the pleasure of having a new photo."

J. H. Lartigue
photographing ladies at Bois de Boulogne, 1910 or so...