What kind of trouble has photography led you into?

<p>I recently got myself arrested (in the sense of being temporarily detained by impressively armed law enforcement personnel) for taking photos of a historic building that happened to be on the wrong side of a chain-link fence, and that got me wondering. What’s the worst scrape that pursuit of a photograph has gotten you into? Lost in the woods? Irate subjects? Territorial wildlife? Other misadventures?</p>

<p>Wasn't really a scrape -- kind of funny really, even right after. Had tickets to Equus starring Richard Burton -- '77 or so I think. Had been out all day around NYC with my girlfriend and Nikon F Photomic Tn. Hadn't paid attention to the play, was going just to see Richard Burton live on stage for the second time, the play was irrelevant. Anyway, there were signs outside that said something like "Absolutely No Cameras", so I slipped mine under my jacket -- no thought of using it in the theatre, just didn't want to leave my irreplaceable camera in strange hands. We got to our seats (good ones), then had to stand to let another theater patron pass to get to theirs. It was the actor Eddie Albert. As I squeezed back to let him by, my jacket swung open, he saw the camera, gave his famous raised eyebrow expression and moved on. I sweated the whole first act expecting to be tossed out, unable to afford tickets another time. "Absolutely no cameras" because the play included full male and female nudity! Burton clothed, and as always, fantastic on stage. We were able to stay to the end despite my smuggling. Thanks, Mr. Albert!</p>

<p>I've told this story before here but now I've got newer information to make it a bit more interesting.</p>

<p>Anyway several years back riding around town on my bike I was shooting from the street several interesting looking houses in my home town in a neighborhood of restored historical homes when a Mercedes Benz pulled up and a woman I recognized from our community volunteer meetings together rolled down her window and asked what I was doing.</p>

<p>I called her by name and told her mine and asked if she remembers our meetings and she replied she didn't. I told her what I was doing and she kind of said in an upset voice that she's been receiving death threats due to the political climate surrounding ordinances being passed which we had discussed in our community meetings. She said it just upset her that I was doing this where I had to assume she must think I had nefarious intent shooting homes with my camera.</p>

<p>I said goodbye and she drove off. I went back to shooting an interesting looking house when the owner, an elderly woman, came out and I talked with her about the history of the home when after about five minutes had passed a police squad car pulled up and I told the elderly woman that it's probably for me so I excused myself and went over to talk to the police officer. He pretty much repeated the comment about the political climate as the woman in Mercedes and asked to see my driver's license which I obliged. After that exchange I got a bad taste in my mouth over the whole incident and went back home.</p>

<p>I saw the upset woman in the Mercedes I attended meetings with several years later on an episode of "Stalked: Someone's Watching" on the Investigation Discovery Channel. Check it out...</p>

<p>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2592284/</p>

<p>She comes across a lot more intelligent and stable than what I remembered from our little chat.</p><div></div>

<p>I tend to go by myself to take landscape photos. So far I've been fortunate. In 2004 I was scouting a creek in upstate NY. At one point the creek went through a tunnel under a 200 ft high railroad embankment. The creek was shallow seldom topping my boots and I had a flashlight and I could see the other end so I waded through. There was a pool at the end about 3 feet deep. The film in my pocket got a little wet. In that section of the creek I couldn't find any evidence of human visitation in the past 100 years. In retrospect, the photos were not worth this much risk.<br /> <img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-w9hNKCL/0/M/i-w9hNKCL-M.jpg" alt="" /><br /> In 2014 I visited Soco Falls in North Carolina. I climbed down the bank to get better shots. I had a big problem climbing back up. My heart was pounding and I don't want to think what my blood pressure was. On this trip I netted some good shots.<br /> <img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Waterfalls/i-bTWNMgh/1/M/20141023_Asheville_2759a-M.jpg" alt="" /><br /> I frequently visit the Lower Falls in Rochester by myself. The surrounding neighborhoods are pretty rough, but I've never had a problem. I'm usually there near mid day under bright sunshine. On two occasions I've gone there at 4 am to capture a moonbow. Midnight might be more risky, but at 4 am, it was deserted. The shot I got is not pictorially great, but it recorded a rare event. <br /> <img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Lower-Falls-of-the-Genesee/20150603-Lower-Falls-Moonbow/i-87p2DSW/0/M/20150603_Lower%20Falls%20Night_4669_70_71_fuseda-M.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /></p>

<blockquote>

<p>The shot I got is not pictorially great, but it recorded a rare event.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Are you kidding, Ron? You freakin' captured a rainbow at night! That's amazingly beautiful!</p>

<p>Early on in my career I was stampeded by a herd of buffalo after climbing into their space in Elk Island National Park. The pictures weren't as spectacular as the memory.</p>

The worst trouble I have gotten by making photos was developing an insatiable addiction to making more photographs.

The addiction is terrible and repeated interventions by family members, friends, and colleagues have failed to loosen its

grip on me.

<p>A short while after the truce that ended the 1973 Ramadan War, I was just west of the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, and took this picture. Very shortly, a large number of workmen, a few policemen, and some military men ran up and accused me of being a spy taking a picture of President Sadat’s villa/dacha (not in the picture, BTW).<br /><br />After much discussion mediated and translated, I managed to avoid a lynching and was allowed to take my camera and film and depart. <br /><br />The inset is essentially the same view taken in 2007. You will note all the new construction in what was the Western Desert in 1973. Still no Dacha, though.</p><div></div>

<p>More adventures than scrapes so far for me. Last August I got up at 2am on the peak of the Perseids with the idea of heading away from the city to shoot meteors. I had this vision that overlooking an active open pit copper mine would make for an interesting nightscape. So I picked up my dad in the middle of the night (he's such a sport) and off we went. They were cloudy skies over Tucson, but I was hoping we'd drive out from under them as we approached the mine a couple hours away. No such luck! In fact, it got a bit drizzly as we got to it. Undeterred, I made for the pit overlook on the side of the highway. Wouldn't you know it - there was no overlook anymore! Where you used to be able to see across the pit from the highway, now there's 20-foot high earthworks traversing the length of the mine property. Weather be damned, we weren't going to get the shot I had envisioned regardless. So we turned around and headed toward home with nary a shutter click. Along the way we did see that the clouds were breaking up, so we stopped and got our cameras out, but by then there wasn't much time before the sky started getting too bright and we never captured any meteors. We did see a nice sunrise that morning though.</p>

<p>This past Thursday we tried it again! Different destination this time - a picturesque mountain range in the desert northwest of the city, only an hour away this time. We got hung up (literally) three miles short of the destination. Heavy thunderstorms earlier in the week had washed out the dirt road. With a 4x4 pickup I thought "No problem! The low angle of the headlights makes all of the bumps and dips loom larger than they really are. We can make it across." Wrong! The truck got hung up on the bank of the wash with the front wheels down in the soft sandy wash and the rear wheels up on the road. We made some futile attempts to stack rocks under the wheels to give them something to grip, but forward or reverse, they just spun and the truck didn't budge. So we went ahead and started shooting from there. I did not get the mountain foreground I was after, but I did get some milky way and meteor shots that I'm pretty happy with as a beginner to astrophotography (I'll have to share one when I've processed it to my liking). Just about sunrise the border patrol came along and pulled us out. Just in time! By then the awakening mosquitoes had been alerted to our presence.</p>

<p>Who knows what adventure the Perseids will bring us next year! Hopefully my dad is still up for whatever. It's becoming a tradition.</p><div></div>

<p>I was photographing Angry Samoans and the mosh pit got a little out of control. I got slammed in the kidney and could barely breathe for a minute. I may have been keeling over because all of a sudden everyone was asking if I was OK. I just stood at the side for a while because I had to photograph the headliner but I wasn't feeling great for a few days. This seems to be the danger of standing up front, I got hit on the head by a video camera flying through the air when someone lost control and crushed under someone trying to crowd surf. Oh well...</p>

 

<center>

<p><img src="http://spirer.com/images/samoans2.jpg" alt="" width="525" height="700" /><br>

<em>Angry Samoans</em></p>

</center>

<p>Went through the ice in a small river one spring about 15 years ago. It was only three or four feet deep, so I bottomed out, but it scared the hell out of me. I was by myself, but I crawled out on the ice. I was maybe 800m from the car, so no danger of hypothermia.</p>

<p>June 2nd, 2008 - Jerusalem Day.</p>

<p>My wife and I were walking around in the old city late in the afternoon as a large crowd started to build and marched through the narrow streets. It takes a lot to make me feel uneasy, but at some point I told my wife to get inside our hotel compound, which was protected by large wooden gates and stone walls (about 20 feet high). I stayed out a little bit longer to capture more images then decided to go inside as well. The hotel is in the Arab section of the old city.</p>

<p>Most of the crowd were friendly and celebratory, but the anger from some were palpable. As I got to the gates, I saw a couple of Palestinian youths who looked scared and and were taking some abuse form the crowd. The boys ran toward me and instinctively I let them inside the gates.</p>

<p>I guess that some in the crowd (those who were angry to begin with) took that as a political statement. So a few of them came at me. Someone hurled something small that glanced off of my wife's neck while someone else pulled my camera neck strap (not hanging from my neck). I almost lost it when I say my wife's reaction (thankfully, no injury) and almost rushed the guy, but my wife held me back. The revelers who were more level-headed also pushed back the angry ones.</p>

<p>In the meantime, this one guy was still pulling on my camera strap. So I pulled back. Hard. He stumbled and fell. I got my camera and closed the large wooden gate. The only damage: one of the camera strap rings pulled apart and came off the strap lug.</p>

<p>Note: I am NOT a political person, especially outside the US, and don't claim to have any knowledge of or expertise in political and social conditions in that part of the world. I was just a tourist, and all I saw were some angry revelers, two scared boys and somebody throwing something at my wife.</p>

<p>From early in the celebration, as the crowd started to build:</p>

<p><img src="http://www.leonin.net/img/s12/v173/p965304494-4.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Later that evening (taken from the safety of a balcony within the hotel compound):<br>

<img src="http://www.leonin.net/img/s3/v41/p1404960365-4.jpg" alt="" /></p>

 

<p>Very engaging story, Keith. Thanks for sharing.</p>

<p>I guess on the bright side from a tourist's POV is that at least you didn't have to wait an hour in long lines at an amusement park and fight those crowds. This past week the news reported a kid killed on a water ride by almost being decapitated. </p>

<p>I had an high school art teacher back in the '70's who vacationed in Jerusalem to see the places she read in the Bible. Us students had to spend about an hour viewing the slides as a result. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Nothing came of this, but a security guard questioned me and threatened to call the police as I took pictures of flowers on the public streets of the Denver Tech Center. I sometimes use my 500mm as a macro lens and had it on one body and my 70-200mm on another body. I was shooting outside a gated residential community, right in the middle of the tech center. The security guard for the residential community, left that property and came out to me on the public street and asked me what I was doing. Knowing I was in a strong position, I asked him what it looked like I was doing. He then said he'd call the police and I said that would be fine with me. Instead, he left in a huff.</p>

<p>I think the big lens has something to do with it.</p>

<p>Another time I was in a state park, wildlife sanctuary and recreational facility, shooting finch eating thistle. I was shooting out my car window because I could pull right up to the edge of a parking lot, about 10-yards from the finch. About 25-yards behind me, there was a group of five to seven-year old girls, in a group camping/picnic area. After about 20-minutes of shooting, a woman came over and asked what I was doing. Rather than being flippant, I said that I was shooting the finch on the thistle. To that she said, "You can't do that here. We've got young girls over here and don't want you doing that." I said that I knew the park rules and that I was allowed to use the public areas of the park so long as I didn't disturb other park visitors. She said that I was disturbing her and I suggested that we call a park ranger to ask him or her. To that she said, "My husband is the head ranger" and then I said, "Let's get him over here." She walked off in a huff, after taking a picture of my license tag.</p>

<p>Another time, I was shooting with the 500mm in about the same area of the same park when a guy in an electric cart and a vest (probably some sort of volunteer) pulls up and says, "What do you think you're doing?" I say, "Shooting birds" and he says something like, "Well, just make sure that you don't shoot any people." ?? Anyway, he left with no threats. At least he wasn't in a huff.</p>

<p>Another time, in the same park, a senior ranger approaches me and tells me that another photographer had "reported" me for something no-specific and hadn't even done yet. "Watch Dave Stephens, I know he's up to no good." Eagles were in the park, so it's technically outside guidelines to come within 300-yards of a "hunting perch". As the ranger spoke with me, letting me know that he felt obligated to watch me, we were about 100-yards from a hunting perch with three eagles in it. My nemesis had told the ranger that, "If he (the ranger) didn't make that guy (me) follow the rules, then he would make sure that someone from higher up (state wildlife dept) would straighten me out." Of course nothing came of that, but I was surprised that someone would threaten a ranger out of jealousy.</p>

<p>Anyway, I produce a park calendar annually and give them to any park ranger that wants one. You never know when one of these interactions might go totally South.</p>

Thanks Tim - my friends can sympathize re: sitting through a slide show of my trip. Lol!

<p>I was photographing a demonstration in the 1970s when the riot police began shooting tear gas. One canister landed right in front of me. I paused just long enough to shoot a great picture with my 28mm lens of demonstrators scattering away from the exploding gas cloud. Then I turned and ran -- downwind, unfortunately. In seconds I was overcome by the gas and spent the next few minutes rolling on the ground in misery, completely blind and oblivious to all the chaos around me.</p>

<p>When my (blurred) vision finally returned, the first thing I saw was a demonstrator putting on a Navy surplus gas mask. I raised my camera and took a point-blank head shot. Luckily my 28mm lens had enough depth of field to cover my sloppy focus. Another good picture.</p>

<p>(I would post these photos but they're on b&w film that I haven't scanned yet.)</p>

 

<p>Later that night I took a shower and was surprised by another dose of tear gas. I hadn't realized that my hair had absorbed some gas, and the shower rinsed it into my face.</p>

 

<p>Was photoing a small herd of bison in Yellowstone out the passenger window of my rental car. Had a 1.7 multiplier on a 70-200 so had min focus distance of 6 feet. The bull apparently saw the blink of the front of the lens, turned towards me about 50 feet away and pawed the dirt. I got the message and put down the camera and he turned and walked away satisfied his display shut me down. But a female down a 5 foot embankment apparently was enamoured by the "winking" from the lens, looking at me all the time, walked up the embankment 20 feet ahead of the car. So I closed the window and slid into the drivers seat and put the key in the ignition just in case. About that time I felt the car pushed forward a bit as another bison was rubbing her shoulder on my left tail light. I instinctively yelled, cut that out, and she obliged and walked across the road. Meanwhile the other female, still looking me in the eye got to the right front wheel, leaned her head over the hood and still looking at me, started licking the windshield. I yelled to the car across the street that I appeal to women of all species as they laughed their heads off. She decided to back away and started for the front of the car that had a really low hood. With that I backed up and got out of there. Photos? None, her tongue was less than 3 feet away with a 6' min focus distance and besides, I was concerned she might try to get on the hood. </p>

<p>Great stories, all of you, and the accompanying photos sure make the adventures seem worthwhile. I guess my worst ever was getting arrested for espionage in a remote Tanzanian town. I’d just finished a month of fieldwork far west of the Serengeti and was wandering with camera and sketchbook through a town marketplace. It being a regional administrative center, the town unfortunately had a regional police chief, who considered the camera and sketchbook to be conclusive proof of my evil intent. So I was hauled off to the proverbial small, windowless room with a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling (actually, that style of light fixture was the norm for the town, but it still would have made the perfect movie set). Anyway, the police chief was ferocious, and it very quickly became very clear that things were headed very pear-shaped very fast. Presence of mind finally beat its way to the surface, and through the fog of fear I recalled the name of the district administrator. Me (trying desperately to look like I was completely calm and naively perplexed): “Well, it looks like this misunderstanding isn’t going to be cleared up as quickly as I thought. Could you possibly ring up Commissioner Makombo and let him know that I’ll be late for lunch?” I was miraculously out the door within a minute, no phone call made (luckily, since Mr. Makombo would have had no idea who I was), and very far out of town within an hour.</p>

<p>Good one, Leslie! I was on the edge of my seat! Has all the markings of high adventure and living dangerously especially with the mention of "espionage". That word's never been said with my name in the same sentence in my entire life.</p>

<p>With you and Keith's adventures, it's pretty much why I don't travel abroad. My Mexico adventure in the mid '70's with my classmates and the same high school art teacher who traveled to Jerusalem (don't know how she could afford to travel on teacher's pay) cured me of ever going outside my US border. I didn't take a camera so it's not worth mentioning in this thread.</p>

<p>Stopped along highway 61 (IIRC) in Minnesota to take a picture of some lupins. It was just off the road but apparently I strayed too far down some guy's driveway. Next thing I know, I look up and there's this guy looking like Wilford Brimley standing there with an unamused looking dog. I said something along the lines of "Good Morning!" and turned around and left. Nothing else happened.</p>

<p>David, it's amazing how some people react to "big fancy cameras". Though, in my experience, rather than stirring suspicion it just heightens everyone's expectations of my ability. My "big fancy camera" garners a lot of requests for event and portrait photography, which I am really not comfortable with.</p>

<p>James, I too receive requests based on my equipment, but I also turn them down, mostly. Fortunately, I don't rely on my photography income to pay the rent. I'm happy when it pays for the equipment. Now if a good looking woman what's some outdoor portraits, then...maybe...</p>

<p>Where do I start ?!?<br>

I live in the UK, where until recently the Police (note capital P to be Polite) were unarmed and could be relied on to listen to reason and act responsibly. Now ? Not so sure. One of my interests is Railways, but not modern motive power or routes. When I am trying to trace old railway routes, always on foot as I don't drive, I frequently find I have strayed from public-access areas (!), and on numerous occasions I have been politely requested to leave - I have always courteously apologised and left. Once on the Isle of Wight, I had followed a clearly signposted public footpath, only to be accosted by an irate farmer at the end of a large black aggressive dog who enquired what I was doing.<br>

I explained, and showed him my maps, both modern and historic, clearly showing the footpath, and indicating the signpost. His response verged on the apoplectic, stating he was fed-up with hordes of people trampling his crops. I pointed out that a) we were alone, and b) there was nowt but bare earth in his field. I then turned my back and continued on the footpath. I don't know who was growling louder, the farmer or his dog.<br>

On another occasion, occasional steam-hauled trips were being run out of Marylebone station, in London, using the world-famous locos Mallard and Flying Scotsman. I decided I'd like to photograph them, so wandered round looking for a public vantage point. Having found one, I took some photos, then notice a side door to the loco-shed was ajar. As there was no notice saying 'No admittance to Tony', I wandered in. <br>

The place stank of diesel fuel, but in the sunlight at the other end I could see two gleaming locos, so I made my way towards them. Suddenly, a heavy hand fell upon my shoulder. I turned, and found myself eye-ball to belt-buckle with the tallest copper I have ever seen. He looked at me sternly, and enquired if I had a pass to enter the shed. I told him I hadn't. He then said I was trespassing, which in those days was a civil offence, not criminal, and said I had to be punished.<br>

He led me outside to where Flying Scotsman was basking in the effulgent sunshine, handed me some cotton waste, and said sternly, but with a twinkle in his eye, 'Clean It !'. Needless to say, I immediately obliged.<br>

That is the kind of trouble, and punishment, I can take all day.<br>

Tony</p><div></div>

<p>[i hope I've waited a decent interval for this thread to run its course before hi-jacking it ... I would also like to note, before I do so, how delicious I find the word 'nowt' as used by Tony, above. We Americans don't get to use it.]</p>

<p>***************************</p>

<p>I'm thinking about the peculiar nexus of the role of <strong>negotiation</strong> in photography. For example, this from Gregory Conniff about working on his <em>Urban Gardens</em> project in Cleveland:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>An easy way for me to connect with a new town is to approach a house with an interesting garden, ring the doorbell, introduce myself as a gardener, and ask permission to look around. Every garden is different, but all gardeners share an enthusiasm for showing off what they have made. Even the crustiest gardener will soften if you can spot an intriguing plant and, while remarking on it, pronounce its Latin name correctly. One gardener will refer you to another and before long someone will invite you to eat out of the garden. At that point, you, the stranger, are inside the fence, part way home, backing into Eden.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>... "you, the stranger, are inside the fence ... " Certain kinds of photography demand this kind of <strong>negotiated</strong> access, it seems to me, for example photojournalism with all its political and cultural connotations, or all kinds of for-hire work. But other kinds of photography are strenuously resentful of it: most notably, art photography. I'm not sure if this is because one's ideas of 'art' are inherited from other media, where negotiation by the artist seems not only unnecessary but anathema, or if there's something intrinsic to art that feels its trajectory to exceed what can be negotiated, almost by definition. [i'm talking only about the <em>making</em> of art, not about its use or display after it's been made.]</p>

<p>To <strong>negotiate</strong>, one needs some kind of <strong>warrant</strong> [using the broad definition of <em>warrant</em>, which is 'justification or authority']. Conniff used gardening but he also had the fact that he had been commissioned by The George Gund Foundation to do the particular <em>Urban Gardens</em> project.</p>

<p>There's a lot of great photographic work that depends, <em>for it's power</em>, precisely on the tension of <em>not</em> having <strong>negotiated</strong> in situations where questions of <strong>warrant</strong> are not settled.</p>

<p>On a personal level, for me in my own photography, in all cases that I can think of where I've had to negotiate or ask permission, I have just not thought of that work as being artistic. I am documenting. When I'm thinking artistically, it's going to be outside of any kind of negotiated area. That's not by deliberate intention; it just seems to be automatic for me.</p>

<p>I'm curious (and this is what got me into this too-long post) where/if <strong>negotiation</strong> does overlap artistic photography. Conniff's work trends to the artistic but mainly because he shoots from the gardens into the urban, making the urban/garden contrast the focus of his project. He's actually commenting on the <strong>negotiated</strong> boundary between public/private.</p>

<p>I think you're adorning too much photographic and artistic efficacy into that one incident with Conniff's gaining access into the gardens of home owners so he can shoot from the inside out as if no one else would've thought to photograph from that angle.</p>

<p>I wouldn't be able to negotiate as Conniff and truth be told I believe from what you outlined he was more buttering up the private land owner by saying he's commissioned by a foundation for an Urban Gardens project. Give me a break!</p>

<p>From my POV art is made through photography by truly letting one thing lead to another in creating something unique. I just don't think a photographer has to put them self in a situation such as negotiating (or what I call being friendly) with strangers in order to create meaningful work. No, I don't think it overlaps. There's too many players at play here to parse causality.</p>

<p>Your Conniff's method of negotiating I believe wouldn't work with autistic photographers but that hasn't stopped them from creating artistic photos.</p>

<p>I would think it would depend on the subject the photographer wants to capture and if that photographer has to rub elbows to gain access, that can't be the defining factor that creates a unique photo. For example a throng of photographers who all got press passes to take pictures of celebrities are all snapping at the same subject but only one is chosen as the most artistic and valuable? I don't think that photographer had anything to do with that. It was decided by someone who paid money for it who told the public that one photo is artistic and publishable.</p>

<p>The same type of "one thing leads to another" situation applies to Conniff's case with the urban gardeners.</p>