Do You Take Photos In Traffic?

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Traffic sucks, but sometimes there are interesting cars. If I’m at a dead stop, I occasionally grab a photo. I may wait to post them until I’m out of the car, but I’m not going to speed into a bus full of innocent kindergartners taking a quick pic while stationary. What about you? Do you take photos in traffic? Why or why not?

Over on Jezebel, this week’s DirtCast mentions the odd hysteria surrounding a photo Nancy Meyers took in traffic of a truck with a kitchen ad on the side. Meyers is a writer and director of movies like The Parent Trap and Father of the Bride known for being a total kitchen design enthusiast.

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Like every photo I’ve ever had to explain, she appears to be going nowhere in full gridlock when she grabbed the pic, although some took her joke about “almost crashing” over the interesting kitchen pictured on the side of the truck so literally that it made headlines.

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Man, am I ever familiar with this argument—especially to my mother, or anyone keen to smugly remind me that Austin is mega-strict on cell phone use behind the wheel. (Guys! I live here! I know!)

But let’s be honest—the five seconds it takes to snap a photo of another car when you’re stuck in the same place for seemingly 366,654,623,841 seconds is just fine, so long as the phone goes away the second your car gets moving again, and you don’t go nose-down on Instagram to post the pic and forget to inch forward when the time comes.

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If I’m bored in the passenger seat, though, all bets are off. They’re not going to be museum-quality photos, but I’ve got to stay amused somehow. Bad car mods and rad old cars aren’t going to post selfies on their own, man.

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I will snap anything and everything while not driving to keep myself entertained, yet I still have to make a similar defense sometimes. “No, I wasn’t driving. I’m not going to get slapped with a huge fine by Austin cops and end up in jail forever and ever until I die. No one cares about a passenger snapping a pic.”

Now that I know that at least one other person openly whips out a phone camera in deadlocked traffic, I’m curious. Do you ever take photos from the car? Why or why not?