Having recently returned from a monthlong trip to Europe, I wanted to rant just a bit about the way the tourists seem to have no respect for anyone but themselves. They will walk in front of your camera, hold their iPhone up in front of your lens just as you snap, walk into you as your setting up because they’re looking at a cell phone or as the case in this photo, just totally screw with your shot. Yes, I can clone it out, but why can’t people just have some consideration. This dude just walked up and set his camera in front of mine while I was shooting in Venice. His shot could have been done on the other side of me, there was plenty of room that late at night. Took all I had to not bump him over the side of the canal

The local people are fine, but it’s mostly the hordes that get off the Cruise Ships that are such as#0/e$. And of course dipsticks like this guy.

The problem may be the way cruise ship tours are operated. On a cruise my wife and I took last year around the British Isles, we stopped at eight ports of call in ten days. At only one port did the ship stay over night and allow us a second full day. Almost all cruise ships stop at each port for only one short day. They typically arrive in port just before dawn. By the time they are ready to disembark all the passengers going ashore, half the morning is shot. The ships typically sail in the late afternoon following at least a couple of hours getting the passengers back aboard. As a result, there is a lot of pressure on passengers, most of which have never been to the location and may never be there again, to see as much as they can in the very little time they have been afforded. It should be no wonder that some tourist that feeling the pressure of seeing and photographing as much as possible in a limited time frame may become oblivious to other photographers or act with short tempers.

Although we have been on several cruises and port tours, our British Isles cruise provides a typical example. Our ship's last port of call was La Harve, France. We had never been to France, so instead of taking the close by Normandy tour, we took the Parris Tour. It was a two hour drive to Parris, the bus rushed around the city. We drove quickly around the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe where photography was very difficult from the bus. Because the tour guide was narrating the tour from the front of the bus and we were in the back, we were trying to pick out one sight while she was talking about the next. As a result, I have a whole bunch of pictures that I have no idea of what they are of. The only real stop we made was at Notre Dame. There was sufficient time to photograph a decent amount of the interior. After that, it was back on the bus which drove by the Eiffel Tower over a mile away. A couple of us had to talk nicely to the bus driver to get him to agree to stop long enough to jump off the bus and shoot a few frames (less than five minutes) after which we drove another two hours back to the ship.

For the most part, photographers are an afterthought for the tour operators. It starts with the buses themselves. The majority of the new European tour busses have polarized windows that not only preclude the use of a polarizing filter on your camera, but also amplify reflections on the windows from the inside of the bus. Because they try to cram too much into a tour so they can say that you will see everything, the busses often fly past the sights you most want to photograph. Then there are the "photo stops". Depending on the tour, there may be one or two and they are often too short to get good photographs because there is no time to go far from the herd and everyone is climbing over one another to get a shot. Add to that the fact that there may be five or more buses from the same ship following each other and making the same stops at the same times, it is a wonder that there isn't more discourtesy.