9/11 Sparked Decade Of Madness Against Photographers

[Bob Hubbard]

In LA the PD apparently gets to decide the artistic merits of photographic subjects, without receiving any training in the topic.
I somehow doubt that the majority of non-photographers 'get it'.

 

[granfire]

In LA the PD apparently gets to decide the artistic merits of photographic subjects, without receiving any training in the topic.
I somehow doubt that the majority of non-photographers 'get it'.

It's LA...everybody is a critic!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Art test for cops:
True or false:
The Golden Mean is a fast food place in Burbank.
A portrait should be centered to be artistically correct.
Pablo Picaso is the name of an illegal lettuce picker.

If you answered false, you might understand art.
If true, you don'ta knowa nutin.


Please don't tase me bro. It might hurt my camera.

 

[Carol]

I'm going to use this as my starting point, and my take on some of it.

It's not a war on photographers, or tourists, or anything else. It is a heightened awareness of the potential concerns about some activities -- and some of those activities overlap with photographers. And that awareness has spread from a small subset of people (some law enforcement, security personnel, and the like) to a lot more people -- including people who don't really know much more than they've heard all the "See Something - Say Something" PSAs.

So, some guy is taking pictures of a bridge, or even just a building. Once, it would have been ignored. Today, someone sees him, and calls the cops. The cops show up -- and some of them don't know any better than the guy who called. So they "interview" the photographer... who, sometimes, we have to admit, has an agenda when something like that happens, or just plain is stubborn and obnoxious about things. Stupidity and needless drama ensues, from both sides.

Add in the ease of posting things to the web, and the proliferation of cameras in cell phones, cheap digital cameras and more, and we get into another area of problems. More people are taking more pictures and videos of things that might not have been photographed or videoed before. Including police encounters... Once again, add a conflict of well intentioned folks sticking to their guns, right or wrong, on either side... and more needless stupidity and drama comes up.

I'm all for being reasonable, but when an agency of the state depicts a photog as a terrorist, the debate is not framed in a reasonable manner (in a general sense, I don't mean here on MT)

 

[granfire]

I'm all for being reasonable, but when an agency of the state depicts a photog as a terrorist, the debate is not framed in a reasonable manner (in a general sense, I don't mean here on MT)

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Yiekes!

 

[Bill Mattocks]

There was a real nice one a couple years ago. Amtrak was holding its annual photography contest, and managed to arrest a couple of people taking photographs of trains FOR THE CONTEST from a legal, public place of a legal, public train. Seriously. Amtrak - come take photos of our trains for our contest; so we can arrest you for it.