Taping cameras and fooling around with stickers

As the sun starts to shine more and more and it's officially spring all us photography nerds wake up and dust our old-as-dirt cameras and start looking for the season of mythical street photography.

Street photography is nature photography but the subjects are humans in the city. Some people don't like street photography. Usually the people who are on the "business side" of the camera (in front of the lens).

In order to take photos but avoid ancient finnish martial arts "turpiinveto" some people try to mask their cameras. Like my friend Pekka who I have met once.

Pekka is a self proclaimed photography wunderkind mostly spending his days plagiarising the works of real photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau and fiddling around with his really, really, expensive Leica camera.


Pekka wrote in his actually quite good blog about taping the shit out of Leicas in order to avoid attention on the streets. It's an old trick to mask the infamous red Leica dot on the camera or use some black magic marker on your black cameras white details.

Oh did I mention that you should only own black cameras?

Black cameras are way cooler than chrome plated. Or god forbid, red.

Black cameras also take better pictures and keep their value better. If you don't believe me, check out this black Olympus Mju-II from Kameratori.

But there's a risk using too much of that black gaffers tape. A couple of feets too much and you end up looking like Miroslav Tichý. A raggedy man with a homemade camera. Try to sneak amongst the people looking like Santa Claus on a two month bender? Not much luck catching those iconic pictures of children leaping over puddles. Or womens skirts.

Too much gaffers tape, paracord, bandages, crow feathers, Wunderbaum air fresheners, gayish soft release buttons and womens undergarments and you too will look like poor Pek.. I mean Miroslav!

"OK gimme a clue how to decorate my goddamn camera?!" I hear you crying for help.

The answer is simple.

The laptophippies knew it.

The mountainbikers and skateboarders knew it

The punkrockers knew it.

The answer is:

Ugly mofugging stickers and Dymo texttapes with obscure pop culture references and one liners like;

Charlie don't surf

I'm afraid, Dave

Soylent green is made from people 

Party on Wayne

Wax on - wax off

Do the truffle shuffle!

You killed the car

Ohhh, sexy girlfriend!... Bonzai!

No more yankie my wankie

The Donger need food! 

You can also use album names of 70's progressive rock-scene.

 
Adding seemingly random text to your camera will make you stand out from the grey mass of everyday photographers and tenfold your intellect and make you a true auteur amongst street photographers!