There's Waldo!

As you probably know, I photograph Steelers games for a newspaper.  Sometimes I'll hear from friends who are going to the game, and if I'm lucky, they'll be tailgating prior to the game and I'll get to eat their food.  But I'm also very happy to track them down in the stands and take their picture if I'm able.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that the camera is a powerful tool.  Just by merely pointing the camera toward the stands, I can magically get a hundred or more people to stand up and yell "WOOOOOO!" even though my camera does not record sound.

People just can't help but have that reaction, I guess.  And when I try to take a shot of a couple specific people, it can be hard to get just those people without some other idiot jumping in with his own personal WOOOOO for the shot.

Such was the case this weekend for my good friends John and Linda, who, as you can see in the photo above, had their very own Waldo right next to them.  I think it is actually legal in most states to thwack these folks in the head in order to keep them out of shots.  After I took this picture, a beer guy in the front row told me he thought I was taking his picture, as though I was fascinated by the process of selling beer.

I was thinking about these people, wondering what goes on in their demented heads when they feel that it's necessary to jump into someone else's photos all the time.  And then I had one of those ah-ha moments, realizing that most of the time I am the idiot jumping into other people's shots.  I can't begin to imagine how many photo albums are in existence with at least one shot of me acting like an idiot in the background.

Maybe it's built into the male genetic code.