I showed up to volunteer at a local dinner/fundraiser event for a Crisis Pregnancy Centre, and had my camera with me. First thing someone in charge said to me was "Oh, are you are photographer for tonight?" It was pretty funny. Then they made me carry around heavy plates of appetizers, offering them to everyone. Killed my arm. Later, I was having trouble shooting photos, jello muscles can't hold a camera steady.
I am the volunteer coordinator for Cornerstone FL music festival, I'm staff. I got a friend who's a photog an "in" with all of the stage managers, so he could shoot all day on all the stages if he wanted. Later, I stopped by to shoot a few pictures, and the security guy, who was one of my volunteers, but whom hadn't met me, wouldn't let me backstage! I'm like "Dude, you work for me!" and he's like "the in charge guy said no one gets in!" It was pretty funny in hindsight, I had to go get someone else to convince the guy that I really was staff.
And around school events, I get asked lots of things. "is that an expensive camera?" "Are you a professional?" people assume I'm shooting for yearbook, which I'm not. The head photog for yearbook did a presentation on photography for her senior project this year, and it sucked. She had some factual errors. Her picture examples sucked. And you know what I noticed when I was looking through my yearbook? They used some of my photos, without my permission or even letting me know, and they gave me no credit for them either!!!! I probably emailed them over to the editor in chief, a good friend who is also a bit of a photog, we email pictures back and forth for critique, and she probably thought that I was ok with them using them in the yearbook. I don't have much of a problemw ith it, but professional courtesy says they should have asked and given me credit for them.
I whipped out my 500mm lense the other day at an event. "Wow, that's a big camera!" And people moved out of my way. I was taking pictures at church and someone asked "what zoom is that?" I explained it was a 6mp sensor, so I could easily zoom in by 10 or so probably. Later I realized that they probably thought it was a zoom lense, but it's a fixed focal, 135 f2.8. They woudln't have understood if I explained it like that though.
And lastly, I get wierd looks from the shutter noise. If it's quiet, people turn and look at me. Some ask to see the picture. Others ask what the noise was. Some tell me I have a noisier shutter than their camera. I have one friend who says that all the time, and he claims to be a photog. He carries his gear around in the cardboard boxes it came in and he's yet to show me a picture he took.
