What is con­sid­ered ‘off lim­its’ in pho­tog­ra­phy? Well, the answer of course can cer­tainly vary from one pho­tog­ra­pher to the next.

These days, pho­tograph­ing chil­dren raises a red flag for many peo­ple and some pho­tog­ra­phers steer clear away from them. There may be a sense of ‘intru­sion’ into the lives of these chil­dren, and pho­tograph­ing them may just not feel right. There is also the per­ceived risk that some­one may call the author­i­ties sug­gest­ing that the pho­tographs are being taken for sex­u­ally moti­vated rea­sons. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that pho­to­graph chil­dren do so in order to show the true beauty and inno­cence of who chil­dren are. They don’t care about per­ceived risks as they know that the pho­tographs they take are art­ful and eth­i­cal. Com­pletely dif­fer­ent sides of the story, right?

Another inter­est­ing choice of sub­ject to some pho­tog­ra­phers are street scenes — cap­tur­ing the beauty of sur­round­ings with peo­ple pass­ing by. No wrong doing right? Well again, to some pho­tog­ra­phers, there is a sense of dis­com­fort in shoot­ing com­plete strangers with­out get­ting their per­mis­sion first. Other pho­tog­ra­phers that know their rights (it’s legal to pho­to­graph any­one in a pub­lic place) have no issue with the ‘shoot first and ask ques­tions later’ policy.

There are many inter­est­ing sub­jects to shoot, and which is right depends on the photographer’s pref­er­ence, taste, and com­fort zone. What sub­ject mat­ter are YOU uncom­fort­able shoot­ing and why?

For more on this sub­ject, check out the Pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects — off lim­its thread in our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.