Monday, December 15, 2008

Dance Mania and a Cautionary Tale

Party Scene1

I had a busy but fabulous weekend. My younger son and I danced in three performances of a local Nutcracker production. I was the equivalent of an extra on a movie set, part of a group of around 10 adults who adorn the party scene. My son was in a starring role and it was wonderful to see him dance. It was tiring but fun and now it is hard to get back to a work/school routine. Fortunately next week is winter vacation!
One bit of ugliness happened yesterday which marred my joy in posting photos of this event. I've always had some reluctance about posting pictures of children, mine and others. I read once on a photography forum about parents objecting to other parents posting birthday party pictures with shots of their child in it. Since then I've tried to be ultra-sensitive.
Here's what happened. Yesterday I threw caution to the wind a posted a couple of pictures of the ballet. I wanted to share the photos with my friends and possibly other parents in the community. I figured with hundreds of people in the audience, many taking pictures or video of their own, what was the harm? After all last year someone posted some video on YouTube.
One of the nicer photos was of the Nutcracker and Clara interacting with the Snow King and Queen. All are in costume and it was beautiful. Well, one of my photos on Flickr was marked as a favorite (a Flickr way to earmark photos) by a stranger. I went to his site because I like to check out the folks who favorite my photos. Generally we share a love of photography and have a particular interest in common. Being "favorited" is usually a compliment.
Turns out this fellow chose this particular photo because the Snow King was wearing tights and he has a fetish. Literally. His Flickr groups include "Men in Tights" and "Tights Fetish." I blocked the guy immediately and pulled the photo from public viewing. I wish I could chew him out though. I don't care what turns him on at home but the kid he was ogling is 14! I am so glad said kid's parents won't know about this. I feel a bit contaminated myself.
Moral of the story: beware what you post. There are ugly people out there.

3 comments:

p said...

the creepy dude aside on flicker...i'm glad you had a good time and your son shined!

A Free Man said...

Man, that is depressing. Really, depressing. I don't know what else to say.

deb said...

sad, but I'm glad you left one picture up for us to enjoy here, I love the magic of theatre, I think That's why I am drawn to installation, I get to make my own worlds!