Where and what may we photograph?
Today I came across another rather disturbing photographers’ rights article. This one was on the Daily Telegraph web site: “Has our increasingly paranoid society declared war on the humble ‘weekend snapper’?“.
Most of these recent articles have recounted photographers being harassed when photographing in a location that someone thinks could be a terrorist target, or if any young children happen to be in the vicinity.
My big confrontation
I haven’t experienced any police harassment yet, but I was reminded of a minor confrontation I had about a year ago while photographing. I had stopped for about 10 minutes by the side of the road on a Saturday morning to take the above two (unremarkable) photos of some vacant farmland in town.
As I finished and was folding up my tripod to leave, the property owner came running out of his house across the street behind me. He jogged across the road and demanded to know why I was taking pictures of his empty field, and what I was going to do with the photos. His questions weren’t unreasonable, but his aggressive manner and shouting were. Though my initial reaction was to yell back, I smiled and asked him if this were his property. His response: “You answer my question, first.”
OK, so much for the friendly dialogue approach. After a pause, I decided just to defuse the situation, and calmly explained that I was taking the photos for my personal use and they wouldn’t be used for commercial purposes. He wasn’t really satisfied, but turned and walked back home, telling me to stay off his property. He then watched carefully from across the road as I packed up and drove away.
Frequently in situations like this I offer to send the property owner a print, but this unfriendly guy didn’t deserve a thank-you.
I can only guess at his underlying reason for being concerned about my photographing his empty land.
3 comments
If this is Grenier Field Rd. I believe I’ve met the same old man a couple of years ago under similar circumstances. He was quite curt :)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Londonderry,+NH+USA&sll=49.282362,-123.103148&sspn=0.010274,0.019591&ie=UTF8&ll=42.921435,-71.41794&spn=0.002883,0.004898&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=42.92256,-71.418214&panoid=FSPJvmFCXHuqbQU5bQCLAQ&cbp=12,176.525956810347,,0,4.704271631982474
That’s the right location. It’s good to know he wasn’t singling me out. At least he’s consistent!
Didn’t mean to sidetrack your question though. Other than that one place I can’t think of many other places where I’ve been actively told not to take pictures.
The Google street view has some interesting implications on privacy and photos. We don’t have street view on Google Maps in Canada yet because the privacy laws here are stronger than in the U.S. Now Google has started using some technology to remove images of people entirely from the photo. I bring this up because with street view you never really know when the photo is being taken. There is a mounted camera on top of a car driving by; nothing noticeable and hard to stop if you did.
With amateur photographers you can see the person and people have to step out of the frame of life to take a shot, something that makes them very noticeable from everything else.
You must log in to post a comment.