(Photo: Rijksmuseum)
You’re at the Rijksmuseum, a world-renowned art and history museum in Amsterdam. Is it time to extend your selfie stick and take a picture of yourself?
The museum staff gently suggests that the answer is “no.” They want visitors to experience what they see in the museum instead of documenting their visits online. So the staff asks visitors to put away their cameras. Instead of taking pictures, visitors, who are given pencils and paper, should draw what they see. Like previous generations of artists, they should try to copy the famous works of art or even create their original pieces. You can see pictures from the museum’s efforts here.
-via Colossal
They asked me not to take flash photography of the Mona Lisa. Sounds fair enough, so I turned off flash but still took a picture.
Now when I went to the San Diego/Mexico border and took pictures at a prohibited zone, that's when I was accosted by a uniformed officer (this was less than a year after 9/11). As an Asian tourist, you do not want to antagonize border patrol, so I relented. =\
Visiting places outside my country can be prohibitively expensive, that is why I prefer to snap pictures as much as I can. I have not traveled outside Asia for almost ten years now. Costs have put vacation to Europe and America outside my meager means. So if I get the opportunity to go back to these wonderful places, you bet I won't be easily coaxed to forgo the camera.