Sexy Thief Photographers

& The Gentleman Gambler classes

Sexy Thieves as portrayed by Professional Liars

We all know that photographers are one of the sexiest professions. Why is that?

Well, I will tell you now dear reader, it is because we are thieves. And what is hotter than that? (See photograph above).

Not all of us mind, some photographers work with models, plates of food and automobiles. They are paid to turn up, like everyone else on the shoot. It is all transactional.

But in my 26 years of photography I have (generally, not always) observed life as it is lived and taken a moment. I stole it. Right out from under reality. More often than not people had no idea I was photographing them.

I do this because I treasure the real. The true authentic. I know its not in vogue at the moment to work like this, but oh, ya gotta. You gotta shoot ‘em as they lie! It’s so much more rewarding. It’s like the difference between a photograph of a person, their life lived honestly and real, and a photograph of someone who is a Sylvanian Families Rabbit.

Not Real

Even when I was caught in the act of photographing a stranger, out there in the real world, I would smile and immediately engage the person in a delightful conversation. Putting at ease the unexpected mark¹, I mean human, and hopefully leaving them a little more confident in the world. For I would usually tell them what made me drawn to them in the first place, and often, that would involve an honest form of flattery.

This is very much the photographer as Gentleman Gambler and something I have done, genuinely. So there we have it. I confess. I love to photograph people going about their day, doing their job, having fun at leisure. I love it all. Because its real.

And unfortunately for me that whole genre of photography, what is often called reportage, is completely dead.² There is simply no industry left to support it as its woefully non-commercial. Stock photography is over, no newspapers or magazines buy photo-stories anymore, and as is often the case with most photojournalists/doc photographers, you don’t get model release forms from people so you can’t Photoshop cans of liquid sugar into their unsuspecting hands in post-production and then sell them for oodles of big dollar.

And in a way that’s fine by me.

I never wanted to be a commercial photographer. Photography is my trade and I had to trade that skill to survive. I had to live. And you wouldn’t begrudge me wanting to live, and photograph you live too?

All of us, living together.

For real.

Happy 2026 Everyone!

I hope you are as really real as you want to be.

1. I jest my Huckleberry

2. Which is just as well as its one of the most incredibly ridiculously difficult schools of photography to work in.