Silliest Confrontation Involving Photography

<p>Taking a photo class years ago and being sneered at by some other students for using a Canon instead of a Nikon.</p>

<p>Oh and then there was the hipster who started yelling at me for ruining film photography by using a digital camera.</p>

<p>Paranoia exists everywhere. On stroll through the area in Santiago, Chile where many of the embassies are located, I was casually taking pics when two uniformed military guards crossed the street, stopped me and demanded to know what I was up to. It seems I had unknowingly taken pictures of the Israeli embassy. After looking through my camera bag they let me move on.</p>

<p>Paris, France. Perhaps more dangerous than a silliest confrontation. Prostitutes along Rue Saint-Denis yelled at me in French while ducking between buildings to avoid being photographed. I was innocently standing across the street attempting to photograph the nighttime streetscape dotted with pornshops. I put the camera away and continued walking.</p>

<p>In a public street market (Central England ) a woman flower stall holder complained that I hadn't asked her 'permission' to photograph her stall. When I pointed out it was a public market in a public place she said "It would be nice to be asked". My reply was "Nice but not necessary."</p>

 

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<p>I have never had a problem with photographing, and I do a fair bit in the same kind of places that others seem to have had problems at.<br>

There was one time in a mall in Las Vegas where I was taking snap shots of the food court and a bunch of air force women saw me taking photos and wanted their photo taken with me, I was a bit taken aback but what the hey, my wife was a bit surprised to find be surrounded by young women.</p>

<a title="IMG_1470 by KonaScott, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4714612443_2a25967335.jpg" alt="IMG_1470" width="500" height="333" /></a> </p>

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<p>But over the years I have shot in a lot of stores, malls restaurants, store fronts etc. and never had any complaints</p>

 

 

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<p>I have had a number of times where people wanted to get in the shot, which is ok with me. Another time in Las Vegas a friend and I were having a drink in Margaritaville and I wanted a photo of a rather large bottle of beer a young lady had so I asked if I could get a photo of it, the answer was yes as long as they could be in the photo. </p>

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They ended up buying us some beer, and I will do photography for beer just about any day.</p>

<p>Not sure if this is silly or not, but some if not all Casinoa won't let you take pictures inside. Not knowing this while I was on vacation I lugged my big heavy 5D with 24-70mm lens, flash, filters to the Casino only to have the Security Guards tell me they could not let me in carrying that stuff. I said to myself I should have bought my mini spy camera with me and nobody would have ever known. <br>

Washington DC is another hot-spot for confrontations, I once went around taking pictures of buildings because I wanted to test an old used Perspective Control lens I picked up on eBay. I was infront of this building carefully backing up so I could get the entire building inside the frame when 2 burly Security Guards came running out of the building waving their arms violently as if it was the End of the World.<br>

One said to me "DON'T YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO TAKE PICTURES OF FEDERAL BUILDINGS !" I said " I didn't know this was a Federal Building just a building Sir". I added the "Sir" part because this guy looked like he wanted to confiscate my camera, or maybe the film inside.<br>

He then tells me "OK THEN BE ON YOUR WAY ". From then on I became real careful at what I point my camera at around here, but you know if you have a Point-and-shoot they think you are a Tourist and leave you alone. It's something about an SLR that really ticks these guys off. </p>

 

<p>I got the "can I help you, this is my field" from a woman in a car when shooting over a field of yellow rape (canola to most of you guys I think, just in case you think I'm carrying voyeurism to new levels) in southern England. </p>

<p>I thought a bit and said "only if you can work out how to expose this. I'm on ISO 50 and I need to stop the rape blowing about but I need good depth of field as well and I'm finding it a bit of a struggle". That seemed to persuade her that she wasn't going to get any sense out of me at all and off she went.</p>

<p>I get a bit of confrontation, but I guess I found someone wittering on about me photographing a field to be pretty silly. </p>

<p>My silliest was with my wife, who wanted me to photograph some members of her family. She expected it for free.</p>

<p>Quite some years ago I stopped on the side of the road to photograph an old farm house that was literally falling apart. I build railroad models and thought the weathering on the house would be a good reference for my model building. There was a mobile home next door, and as I got out of my car with a camera around my neck, an old lady opened the door and hollered to me they did not want pictures taken of the old house. I responded I wanted photos for my own use, but she said not to again. Since I was on a public roadway and didn't think I was doing anything wrong, I just went ahead and took a few photos. </p>

<p>I was back in my car putting my gear back into my camera bag when I noticed a sporty car drove up and stop right behind me. A big fellow was getting out and heading towards me. I didn't know what was happening, but assumed the old lady might have called a relative about my activities. I didn't even have the key in the ignition, so couldn't make a quick getaway. The fellow came up to my window and asked me directions for some place. Whew! I said I wasn't from around here and got out of there quickly! I was sure I was going to get into a confrontation with someone the old lady might have called.</p>

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<p>Boarder Line</p>

<p>I dont even like to think about it. While on a National Park at a boundary line, I was shooting a landscape that included private, state and federal lands and waters - it was a landscape. The adjacent property owner saw me and actually came across to the park side and confronted me, and said, I could not take the picture that included his property. He was in my face (gulp). After a minute or so of back and forth and his informing me of his property rights, I just told him he may own the property but he did not own the landscape. I took the shots and walked away, but knowing that I did not have a property release for shots that included his property. The image, to my understanding, has limited use because of this. But that was light years ago and I still have the image on film. Im not even sure he still owns the land or his status. </p>

<p><em>Mikael -</em><br>

<em>"the camera will scare the workers"</em></p>

<p>The reason the camera will scare the workers is that they are likely undocumented. I was photographing inside a restaurant years ago for a magazine article, and the second I hauled out my camera all the staff fled the room. I put the camera away and they came back after I did so. Then they ran out again when I picked up the camera again...</p>

<p>A couple of interesting links for you:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.not-a-crime.com/">Not a crime</a><br>

<a href="http://photographernotaterrorist.org/">I’m Photographer Not a Terrorist!</a></p>

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<p>I was involved with several groups of kids doing a scavenger hunt, and one of the things was to get a pic in front of the local power plant. You had to drive a winding road (and know which one to get there). Anyway, one of the groups were told by security personnel they could not take any photos in front of the place, even though they were taking shots from a public road. The kids were obviously posing in a group and being silly. Not sure how that gets mistaken for terrorists, but ok maybe it's their rules.<br>

Anyway, it seems to me that Google Earth, Google Maps and the like probably do more to compromise security than some P&S photos at ground level. The detail in some of those pictures are quite good in areas. That's our good old US govt.</p>

<p>I guess the security types see rules like "<a href="http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/07/secret_buildings_you_may_not_p.html">it's illegal to photograph <em>secret</em> Federal Buildings</a>" and just say it's illegal to photograph all Federal Buildings. And some goes as far to say that it's illegal to photograph all Government buildings.</p>

<p>It's so nice to know that we're living so normally and that the terrorist threats haven't changed our way of life.<br>

Positive "confrontations":<br>

So far in my little GA town, I'm always prepared for a sugar and honey response to local police and others. The reactions I've received were waves from the police driving by and a meeting with a town official who spent a good hour explaining the history of the local town.</p>

<p>In New Smyrna Beach, FL, the local police were actually pointing out photo opportunities to me.</p>

<p>I guess if you're in tourist towns, the locals are very cognisant of the importance of allowing folks to photograph things with out challenge.</p>

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<p>Only twice and once with understanding of why we were detained.</p>

<p>I worked for an engineering firm that was preparing a marketing proposal for a local municipality- it was water and wastewater related work. During the course of shooting, we stopped at one of the cities iconic water towers to take a photo. Within minutes we had two of the city's "finest" parked on either side of us so we could not move and we were detained for about 30 minutes. We immediately had them call our contact at City Hall and she cleared the way for us. We found out later that the neighbors in the area had been directed to call the police if they saw anybody photographing the water tower.</p>

<p>Second time was last year at Christmas time while photographing Downtown Disney at night with a tripod. We were approached by uniformed security and asked what I was taking pictures of? Seemed he was trying to say that I could not shoot "professionally" on property? The fact I was using a tripod, to him indicated I was a professional? Truth be told, my father was in internal security for 17+ years with WDW and this may (?) be their way of approaching and assessing whether someone has other nefarious intents. Terrorism at our local theme parks remains a (hushly spoken) concern.</p>

<p>Not an 'at the time' incident but one that emerged subsequent to taking the image - of a ski slope with skiers.</p>

<p>Resultant pic was used in a ski feature in the local paper, soon followed by a letter from a woman claiming to be the skier in the red suit in the middle of the piste in the photo, and as the photog was getting paid so too should SHE be paid because she was in effect modelling and must be rewarded. </p>

<p>She explained that her lift pass cost her a lot, her skis cost her a lot, her ski suit cost her a lot, and all the ski classes she'd taken to get so good that she was worthy of photographing had cost her a lot too. SO she should be rewarded for her investment in making the photograph look so good. And added that she'd taken legal advice and her lawyer would be pursuing this vigorously if no payment was forthcoming immediately.</p>

<p>An immediate response was sent with a request to calculate her total expenditure over the years on ski gear, passes, food, travel, fuel, accommodation, sunscreen, bobbly hats, gloves and sunglasses, tips to instructors and beers afterwards, to add the lot up, divide it by the number of days she'd actually spent skiing to give her a cost-per-day.</p>

<p>Then divide that by 24 to get an hourly cost, and then divide THAT by 3600 so she could get a cost-per-second, and whatever the figure she arrived at was - divide that again, by the shutter speed used to take the picture - 1/2000 of a second, which was actually the total amount of her valuable time that had been used. It was requested that she send an invoice for that amount with her full estimates and calculations so they could be checked, and she would receive her payment in full by return of post.</p>

<p>Strangely enough, no response was ever received.</p>

<p>I was photographing a rail yard from a public highway with a "companion." RR police approached -- Conrail at that time -- and started questioning us. My "companion" did all the talking. He produced his badge and ID -- he was a major in the State Police (now retired). After that, the Conrail cops just about told us we could do whatever we wanted, they offered to ride us on the ROW to parts of the yard on the property. Now if I was alone, I wonder how things would have turned out.</p>

<p >I was stopped one time taking some photos in the Netherlands outside the US embassy building. The officers simply told us that we were not allowed to photograph the embassy.</p>

<p>A few months after 9-11, I was shooting under the Golden Gate on the Marin side. (Fort Baker). I was shooting with my new Tachihara 4x5 view camera on a tripod. A Coast Guard (?) patrol boat slowly passed then suddenly turned my way and docked. Two huge soldiers in battle gear with automatic rifles jumped out. OMG, I thought, I'm gonna be arrested. They just stood silent and looked at me, not in a friendly way. Then one of them said, "How old is that camera? We've got a bet that says it's 100 years old!"<br>

Naturally, I said---"You're right! It belonged to my Grandfather."<br>

"We thought so! Have a nice day?" They sped away leaving me with my <strong>brand-new</strong> camera very relieved! </p>

 

I had a drunk insist I take his picture.

<p>Yeah you scammer - and you told me you'd send me the print (hic) but I never saw it. Mind you I dont know if I'd recognize me if I saw me. Was I smiling? Damn this being scottish, too much malt, not enough time.......</p>

<p>A couple more interesting terrorist photographer links:</p>

<p><a href="http://stretchphotography.com/blog/2010.07.01/banned-from-metro/">Banned for Life from the Miami-Dade Metrorail</a><br /><a href="http://carlosmiller.com/"><br />Photography is Not a Crime</a><br /><br /></p>

<p>Popular Mechanics has an article in their August 2010 magazine regarding this subject. I was glad to see that it was written in favor of photographers. It quotes an attorney who states that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have laws restricting photographers. It also points out that we may be safer with more cameras around, since it would give the general public a greater chance of capturing something beneficial to law enforcement.<br>

As good as small cameras are these days, if someone wanted to photograph a prohibited subject, they could do it undetected anyway. It seems fairly pointless to stop someone who is being obvious about it.</p>