Is that a dot or a man?

I have been up to London this afternoon for a meeting, and have three things to report.

1. As I have mentioned earlier, I'm doing the Moonwalk in London in May, and as I arrived at Waterloo in plenty of time, I decided to do a walk over three of London's bridges to practice. My Endomondo app told me I had walked 3.27 miles in 38 mins at 5 mph. I can't quite believe I walked that fast so I'm not sure how accurate the app is, but it was good exercise anyway.

2. While walking, I was surprised how icy the pavements still were. I was even more surprised at how many joggers were out running along them without a care in the world, when I was tiptoe-ing old-lady style along, grateful that I remained upright in places. Strange. And what were they all doing running - there were so many of them?

3. I stopped to take this shot and then got accosted by the man that you might just be able to see in the distance, who was obviously not happy at having his photo taken. We had quite a chat about it, and he was adamant that I should act with more respect and make sure that there are no people in the way when I take a photo, and that it was unreasonable of me to invade his privacy in this way. I pointed out that it was taken at such a distance that he would only be a dot in the photo and would he like to look at it, to which he said that he was not a dot, and didn't want to be treated as a "piece of street furniture". An interesting discussion, and it did leave me thinking about the ethics of it. I certainly don't feel comfortable taking a shot of someone I don't know close up although many people don't seem to think there is anything wrong with doing this, but I hadn't given a thought to the fact that someone so far away would mind. I wonder how other people feel about this. I should have said that if that was the case, where would he have me draw the line - almost any shot taken in London is going to have people in it somewhere - but I didn't think about that until I'd walked much further along.

Oh well, you can't please all the people all the time. Was I wrong to take this shot though?