How to Survive Shopping (Ruleshorror)

13 Rules for Photographing Beings

I can hear your objections now, dear reader - Beings, Entities, Others, Mostly Humans, whatever it is you wish to call them - they can't be photographed! It's not possible. We'd have photos if they could be photographed. Hell, some of them don't even show up in mirrors (particularly the sort of old-timey mirror backed with silver). So how on this blue earth can I intend you to advise how to take such pictures?

I do admit you'd need to for a camera that can capture them. And capture, erhm, isn't really the right word. Capture would imply you have control over the Being, in some material way - it's more that you can get cameras that create portraits with accuracy. Seek cameras with language like "portrait" and "likeness" over "memory" or "capture."I'm not saying, that in theory, there isn't some ~magical~ version of digital photography that's able to capture the aforementioned liminal sorts, but I've yet to find it. And it's certainly not on your phone. You need something with film.A polaroid is a shockingly good option for this sort of activity. There's something about the theoretical uniqueness that the worlds seem to agree with, when it comes to the portraiture of the peculiar.Surprisingly, the majoring of Beings and Mostly-Humans can be photographed, given the right equipment and lighting - the question of if you should or if they're willing is an entirely different matter. If you're reading this, I likely cannot disillusion you of this endeavor, at least not wholesale for all Beings and Mostly Humans, but will urge you to consider the latter issue of their agreement. Manners are aggressively important to most of them, so I recommend quite strongly only to photograph that which has agreed, which admittedly, does narrow your options.There are three narrow exceptions to the above: the first of which is if you are absolutely certain the entity specifically is not identifiable. No faces, tattoos, or aggressively identifiable (or identifiably aggressive) body parts. Think a group at a marketplace where everyone is hooded or otherwise hidden anyways, or perhaps the feet of a harpy without scarring that identifies that specific harpy.The second exemption is for parts of them - a tooth, a claw, a scale, that is - and this is critically important - entirely disconnected from whoever or whatever it came from.The third is for monsters, frankly, the sort you shouldn't be that close to anyways, but if you're seriously looking for advice on this, the ship containing your sense of self-preservation has obviously sailed. By monsters in this context, I mean that which operates on pure instinct, no calculations or sense of vengeance - that which could not conceivably be sentient.All of the above, of course, applies to living Beings. If you manage to find one that's dead (and I mean really, truly, 100%, not coming back for Halloween, not in the stone and watching, but dead as a doornail diorama of a dinosaur dead), there are still risks. Much as a dead jellyfish's cells still sting, a dead Being's eyes or skin might have a nasty reverb on your camera. But the risks are lower.You'd be shocked at all that you're able to photograph. If you cannot get them to show up on your camera, however, it is time to leave. Immediately.7a. Some entities that cannot be photographed like to play with their food. You won't like their games.7b. Some entities will agree to be photographed for a trade. You won't like their exchange rate.Photo negatives often yield strange results for subjects that should be normal. Don't expect any less of the negatives of strange sorts.Inconveniently, many sentient sorts of entities will only be photographed in circumstances of plausible deniability, where your photo could not conclusively form evidence of their existence.Keep. Your. Flash. Off. At best you will enrage your subject(s). It is more likely you will not be able to unsee what the flash reveals. Annoyingly, many will appear, much less consent to be photographed, at night. Don't succumb to the desire to turn on the flash.Lighting is very important here - liminal times and spaces like sunsets and sunrises, or where the ocean meets the sand, or where wilderness meets humanity.