I used to work semi-professionally as a photographer. What do I mean by that? Essentially I was part time. I had a great job as a software engineer that I liked and didn’t want to give up, but in my off hours I liked switching gears by earning extra dollars via photography. I specialized in taking photos of the performing arts such as musical artists, plays, circuses, etc. It was fun. It was a very different challenge from writing code.

So this 16 year-old girl found my web site and liked what I saw. She needed some quality photos for her school’s yearbook and approached me to take them. She asked me to take photos appropriate to the yearbook. Not once did she ever request any nudity or anything else inappropriate. She had an after school job and enough money to pay my rates. Everything seemed completely legit. Of course, I was well aware of the stereotypes that would brand me some kind of sick perv if I photographed a teenage girl. I therefore turned to other photographers for advice on putting together a contract that would protect me legally. She wanted a photos of her together with her horse. There would be photos of her riding it, grooming it, and just standing beside it. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I still wanted a contract to protect me legally so that I would not end up falsely accused of any wrongdoing. A protective instinct kicked in because I knew how hyper-negative people get toward men, especially a man with a camera.

I asked other photographers on a photography forum online if there were some kind of standard protective contract I could use. Some photographers responded with good advice on where I could get such a thing. Some also said I should require at least one parent present at the shoot. Good advice. However, others went berserk, accusing me of being some kind of perv out to rape that girl. One asshole claimed that if it were his daughter he would immediately contact the police and the courts and get a restraining order against me. He acted like I had proposed to make kiddie porn. We’re talking about a photo shoot of a fully clothed girl in normal pictures with her horse – feeding it, riding it, normal stuff. These were photos that were appropriate to a high school yearbook.

These male-bashing bigots totally ignored my explanation of the content of the shoot and just assumed I would ask her to take her clothes off and do pervy things and that it would end with me raping her. No amount of setting the record straight did any good. It was unreal the hateful assumptions people made. Some photographers came to my defense, appalled as I was at the overreaction. Some correctly said that photographers photograph all ages. Duh. It totally depends on the content of the photos as to whether it’s appropriate. It’s unreal how some people heard “fully clothed girl riding a horse” and translated that to “perv raping a teenager.”

I ended up doing the shoot, no thanks to the male-bashing bigots. It went great. I had a liability contract and I had her father present at the shoot. Great guy, and great girl. They were awesome people. Neither of them made any of the absurd assumptions some idiots had made. This was a case of a young woman who had earned her own money at a job and had chosen to spend it on some high quality photos. Nothing more. It’s unreal how some people will twist something like that into something sick.

Other photographers have told me about similar situations where they’re assumed to be some kind of perv because they have a camera with a telephoto lens. If you’re a man and you take a high-end camera to a beach, you risk getting pestered and even arrested by police. That’s a reason why I won’t even do beach photography. Nowadays, I won’t even photograph someone who’s underage unless I know the people really well. I was lucky at this shoot that they turned out to be terrific people, but if I had gotten the witch hunt idiots, it could have been dangerous for me. I’m 100 percent certain if I were a woman, the whole overreaction and branding me as some kind of creep or perv would never have gone down. “Girl with her horse” – he must be a sicko. It’s unreal.