On the drive out from Portland to Minneapolis, we stopped at a huge gas station, the kind that can accommodate trucks and RVs. While pumping gas, I noticed a team of bikers hanging out over by the side of the store. Their huge motorcycles were clumped together in a protective ring around them, like circled wagons. I wanted to take their picture. So I got my camera.
The bikers watched me, and my camera, as I walked across the long tarmac towards their bikes. One guy, followed by a couple of his buddies met me at the bikes and, before I could speak said, “Now you take that fucking camera of yours and you turn yourself around and fuck off.”
I said, “So you don’t want me to take your picture?”
In disbelief, the man shouted, “NO!” and pointed at me to his buddies like, ‘this guy.’
Just then, a woman standing next to her bike said, “Well, I want my picture taken. You don’t speak for me.”
Gratefully, I took a bead on her and asked her some questions. She lived in the area. They go on weekend rides together. Sometimes for a couple days in a row, through its been years since they’d done anything like that. They do Sturgis.
And then she asked, “What are these pictures for?” Which was a good question that I didn’t know how to answer. I told her the truth, that I don’t really know, but that I’d like to include her picture in a collection of portraits I take.
But she said, “No, what is this for?”
And I said, “I don’t know.”
I thanked her for letting me take her picture, and she nodded, disappointed probably that I wasn’t some big-shot photographer. And she probably wasn’t excited to turn back to her group and face a ribbing for letting some dad who drives a Toyota Corolla take her picture.