" I Dunno What They Call It... "

" But it takes pictures. "

How many times have you have someone come up to you while you were busy justifying $ 8000 of camera and lens and distract you by telling you about the camera they have? Or had. If you are unfortunate they will see you as a kindred soul and want to share the time they found a ghost gum with a '37 Ford ute underneath it. If you are really cursed they will have the picture on their phone. Well, it's on there somewhere - just let them scroll through 2016 to 2020 and they'll find it.

This is the result of modern times...at least post-1937, to judge by the Ford ute. Earlier photographic days with plate and film cameras also produced millions of photos, but few people carried their albums with them in their pocket or interrupted a wedding shoot to show them to you. You might have been entertained with them if you stayed to tea in the parlour or visited for a slide night, but that was a deliberate risk you took.

Is there a good and kind and sensible response? Not if the bride is just about to come down the aisle on her father's arm and you've been hired to photograph it. Brides do not pause or stop for chit-chat. But if it happens at another point in the day there is a very good ploy - the business card.

Keep a pocket full of business cards with your studio address and all contact details. If you're buttonholed when you need to be working elsewhere, plead the pressure of that work but press a card on the enthusiast and ask them to call you at the studio for an appointment. If they never do, at least you have been commercially polite. If they do come round, sell them a portrait session.

If you can do a better job than they can, they may bring their '37 ute in for a car shoot.