Here's another story about the fearlessness of kids. Like the previous entry, this was taken in Descano Gardens and this photo occurs before the one in my previous entry. I'm right along a stream and I'm trying to take another awesome photo of water flowing much like this one (sorry if the link is bad, flickr is notorious for hyperlinking photos based on their site...) and I'm taking...3, 4 shots and as I'm shooting, these kids walk into my frame and at first I'm thinking "get out" but after thinking about how I need more "people" photos, I figure, hell if you're going to be in my frame, I might as well keep shooting you and see what I can get. I didn't really expect them to come any closer. They saw me with the camera and well, normally people would walk away from a perceived shot or just stay where they are you know? Not these kids!
I took one shot after they initially came into my frame and they came closer. Took another shot from their new position (while I stayed in mine) and they came closer again. I'm thinking, "do these kids know what I'm doing? or do they just don't care?" and as they kept coming closer, I kept shooting and it dawns on me that these kids know what I'm doing and they just didn't care. The way they were talking and interacting with each other, it almost seem as if I didn't exist to them! They just kept going on and on about using their sticks to pick up the moss and algae that was gathering on the side of rocks. Then, they came awfully close to the point that if I were to take a shot, they'd finally realize what I was doing and ask me about it or just say something to me and this was the shot I took.
Did they then turn to me and say something? talk to me about what I was doing? Nope. One of them was able to lift up a good sized lump of algae while the other congratulated him and they walked right past me and went on their merry little exploring way.