That sucks :( As someone who takes photos, it would always drive me nuts when people would freak out about having their photo taken. I couldn't understand why anyone would have such a negative reaction to something that seemed very normal to me.
I'm not talking street style photography where you jam a camera in some random person's face while doing your best impression of the worst human being in existence, or creepy person in a park with a zoom lens that could double as a telescope, but someone with a camera at a party or other social event where we all knew each other. Maybe one out of 300-400 people would act like this, and it never clicked as to the why.
My thinking was "You're at a social event where dozens to hundreds of other people are looking at you, and there's nothing about your appearance that would make you a spectacle to others, what is the difference between a camera and bitchy Sally over there that will tell lies about how you look to her girlfriends the next day?"
The camera doesn't lie, and I take care to make people look good on camera - unflattering pictures are the ones that get deleted, or if I know it will look unflattering, I wouldn't take the shot.
Just about anyone I'd take a picture has seen what my work looks like. When I'm not chilling with friends at a party, outside of studio work and landscape stuff, I take pictures for clubs and get paid to do it because I make the party goers look hip and chic and the club look like some place where you want to go. I felt that I objectively took good looking photos, at least good enough that people paid money for them.
When people would have negative reactions like that, I'd be upset because it felt like they were being critical of the photos I shot.
"I don't want to have my picture taken."
"Really, what's wrong?"
"I just don't like it."
To me, it was like someone telling you they had grown tired of eating food and had taken up eating rocks. Made about that much sense to me.
I could never figure out why people could possibly be bothered by someone taking a photo of them.
Now I know.
On a side note, a friend of a friend would always get freaked out whenever she saw my camera in hand. Nice looking girl, but I wasn't sure what the hell was going on.
It always bothered me - did she think I was going to take the pictures home, print them out and furiously masturbate all over them? Bitch, you aren't even catalog. (a model that looks good enough for catalog work, but not notable enough for fashion photography). If you think you're good looking, you've never been in a room with someone who is good looking for a living.
Just pissed me off to no end, because if you're not Mr. McCreepy, getting treated like Mr. McCreepy is unpleasant. I've photographed upwards of a few thousand people, and I've only gotten this reaction from one person that I knew, and two or three strangers. Still not entirely sure if it was the same thing with all of them, but at least I know one reason for being actively camera shy now.