Not long ago, The Aesthetic conducted a small survey of South Bay photo developing shops to ask employees about the weirdest photos that customers have brought in. Here's what we learned:

• "We see a lot of people participating in clothing-optional clubs. And we've seen stuff from the Burning Man festival and stuff like that."
• "The main thing we see is weird naked people. Anything worse we have to report to the authorities. Mostly, it's nudity, wild parties, things people don't remember doing."
• "We get a lot of people trying to make art projects out of things. It'll mean something to them, but to us it looks like 20 pictures of stick."
• "The naked ones are pretty amusing. We also do a lot of booking photos for the police department. Lots of red eyes, but there's also homicides, suicides and accidents — that gets pretty wild. It's not weird, but it's cool to see people on vacations at places I have been to."
• "We get a lot of naked people. Lots of bachelor parties."

(Feb. 2, 2003)

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