A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.
This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.
Just take the photo and wait for result) In my experience, most people don’t care about your camera. Of course there would be people that would complain about that, but it’s a rare case.
Just do some things that you shy about and soon you’ll get confidence.
I don't. It's like a jungle out there. Besides, I've got no time for, "Strange."
Try to find people that want to express themselves, maybe even establish a little relationship before you start shooting so you can gain some trust and they "collaborate" with you. I find this part in photography also a nice thing- as the camera helping you meet people and exchange some moments. Most of them will be too busy to focus on what they are doing anyway if you say you shoot them while they are doing things, in a group, etc. I heard a great documentary filmmaker and photographer tell something like "you don't want to steal someone's image, you want to shoot people that are glad to be shot, to say something through your camera". This mentality helped me loads with my work. Try and see if it works! good luck shooting!