the war on photographers continue
On December 22 of last year, I started a blog entitled "to protect, serve or terrorize" after reading about an UK policewoman who ordered an amateur photographer to delete his photographs. Somehow I may have been sidetracked with Carnival or something more important and so did not complete and post it. In hind sight maybe it was a good thing, that I did not get back to it, and I sometimes wonder if it was just chance, fate or guidance. Of course "believers" will say 'most likely it is divine guidance', and I could live with that too.
Today I see a link posted by another Facebook photographer friend and I feel that I must share because we live in a different time and some of us may not fully appreciate some of what is going down today, and before you know it the rules are changed by some kinds of people, albeit, the skin teeth grinning, honest and decent terrorists among us. I suspect that in some cases, and I refer to here in SK, that it can be a matter of ignorance or more precisely, a lack of knowledge, or maybe even more exact, a willful withholding of information and possible subversion.
This is the link to the online article published on December 23 last year
http://photofocus.com/2010/12/23/the-most-important-photography-news-of-the-last-decade/
I find #5 to be most interesting and permit me to extract a couple sentences ...
Perhaps the saddest and most disturbing photography news of the last decade was the acceptance and implementation of the war on photography. Using the excuse of 9.11 and then terrorism in general, governments, private security guards and even ordinary citizens who are afraid of the scrutiny that photographic evidence might bring, have declared war on photography and photographers.
Just this week Las Vegas police launched a campaign asking citizens to specifically target photographers who were taking pictures of “non-touristy” things. Pity the poor photo journalist who might be doing a project photographing people who live under a bridge or who are homeless or who are in some fool’s opinion not “touristy” enough.
The war on photography is my pick for the most significant development of the last decade because it has the opportunity to do the most damage to the practice of photography as a whole.
Our people, like everybody, citizens, residents ALL, need to know about photography and the law. In times past, most if not all, photographers grew up with that Chernoff publication/book "Photography and the Law", but the Society we lived in back then was quite unlike today. We have attained a more lawless way of life and in time to come photographers may have to engage personal security, like bodyguards, if they need to take a snap in a public place. How this will impact on our Tourism products I can't predict, but what I do know is that in SK, I have already been challenged by Security because I was focusing on a great scene of the Port Zante Marina with the hills in the Background .... and I was not even in the Marina. I don't know if she was following instructions or if she was just flexing her authority.
I sometimes wonder if I was a tourist, white, brown, pink, or black, if she would have still wanted to lock me up, or just waved and say, "Hi, how are you doing. Beautiful day isn't it?" Of course that was before the Brimstone Hill incident. I was dressed like a tourist, but we are only 38,000 residents ... By now almost everyone have some awareness of our "tourism product" and what that is supposed to means to us. It is okay for a tourist to stay on the cruise ship overlooking the Port Zante Marina and Basseterre and take all the pictures he wish, but I cannot stay on Port Zante and struggle to take a few snaps from ground level, snaps of our beautiful Caribbean destination which I will ultimately seek to show the world .... anyway enough said about that.
In the British article it was a female officer, just like ours, and I am now wondering what these female officers have against male photographers. It can't be that so many "hurt" and "hurting" women are out there. I for one expect that women security officers, like mothers, would be more gentle and understanding, but I also know that women function by the book, strictly by the book, and before they make a mistake, they get on the phone and seek clarification. In SK I am seeing more women security officers these days, and I wonder if we are coming or going. I see some even toting guns, and even though I have not heard of women security shooting anyone here in the last 100 years, [except for the "accidental" "testicles" shooting incident] there is always a first and I have no intention of making that statistic. The law is on our side, until you speak of terrorism, and I have no doubt that someone can claim that our camera with a long/telephoto lens looked to them like a weapon of sorts.
Everyone with a camera must be concerned. Even a point-and-shoot can be considered a serious threat to the paranoids waging the war. If it looks like a camera, it must be a camera. As we approach 2012 some folks feel that matters like these can become more significant, and maybe they will if photographers do nothing but just lie down and play dead. But maybe there is really nothing that can be done. We live in a matrix and the program is running, and maybe we can't even introduce a virus to try changing anything. But all is not lost, because we can extricate ourselves from the battle zone and battle fields and pursue our photography in peace. If we need to go into the war zone, there are endless models to emulate, and after all is said and done, photographers will still be on the front lines, and even more than may be expected.
But as for me, I am staying in the Command center and at Master control, because someone has to receive your images, and send them out across the world.
Today I see a link posted by another Facebook photographer friend and I feel that I must share because we live in a different time and some of us may not fully appreciate some of what is going down today, and before you know it the rules are changed by some kinds of people, albeit, the skin teeth grinning, honest and decent terrorists among us. I suspect that in some cases, and I refer to here in SK, that it can be a matter of ignorance or more precisely, a lack of knowledge, or maybe even more exact, a willful withholding of information and possible subversion.
This is the link to the online article published on December 23 last year
http://photofocus.com/2010/12/23/the-most-important-photography-news-of-the-last-decade/
I find #5 to be most interesting and permit me to extract a couple sentences ...
Perhaps the saddest and most disturbing photography news of the last decade was the acceptance and implementation of the war on photography. Using the excuse of 9.11 and then terrorism in general, governments, private security guards and even ordinary citizens who are afraid of the scrutiny that photographic evidence might bring, have declared war on photography and photographers.
Just this week Las Vegas police launched a campaign asking citizens to specifically target photographers who were taking pictures of “non-touristy” things. Pity the poor photo journalist who might be doing a project photographing people who live under a bridge or who are homeless or who are in some fool’s opinion not “touristy” enough.
The war on photography is my pick for the most significant development of the last decade because it has the opportunity to do the most damage to the practice of photography as a whole.
Our people, like everybody, citizens, residents ALL, need to know about photography and the law. In times past, most if not all, photographers grew up with that Chernoff publication/book "Photography and the Law", but the Society we lived in back then was quite unlike today. We have attained a more lawless way of life and in time to come photographers may have to engage personal security, like bodyguards, if they need to take a snap in a public place. How this will impact on our Tourism products I can't predict, but what I do know is that in SK, I have already been challenged by Security because I was focusing on a great scene of the Port Zante Marina with the hills in the Background .... and I was not even in the Marina. I don't know if she was following instructions or if she was just flexing her authority.
I sometimes wonder if I was a tourist, white, brown, pink, or black, if she would have still wanted to lock me up, or just waved and say, "Hi, how are you doing. Beautiful day isn't it?" Of course that was before the Brimstone Hill incident. I was dressed like a tourist, but we are only 38,000 residents ... By now almost everyone have some awareness of our "tourism product" and what that is supposed to means to us. It is okay for a tourist to stay on the cruise ship overlooking the Port Zante Marina and Basseterre and take all the pictures he wish, but I cannot stay on Port Zante and struggle to take a few snaps from ground level, snaps of our beautiful Caribbean destination which I will ultimately seek to show the world .... anyway enough said about that.
In the British article it was a female officer, just like ours, and I am now wondering what these female officers have against male photographers. It can't be that so many "hurt" and "hurting" women are out there. I for one expect that women security officers, like mothers, would be more gentle and understanding, but I also know that women function by the book, strictly by the book, and before they make a mistake, they get on the phone and seek clarification. In SK I am seeing more women security officers these days, and I wonder if we are coming or going. I see some even toting guns, and even though I have not heard of women security shooting anyone here in the last 100 years, [except for the "accidental" "testicles" shooting incident] there is always a first and I have no intention of making that statistic. The law is on our side, until you speak of terrorism, and I have no doubt that someone can claim that our camera with a long/telephoto lens looked to them like a weapon of sorts.
Everyone with a camera must be concerned. Even a point-and-shoot can be considered a serious threat to the paranoids waging the war. If it looks like a camera, it must be a camera. As we approach 2012 some folks feel that matters like these can become more significant, and maybe they will if photographers do nothing but just lie down and play dead. But maybe there is really nothing that can be done. We live in a matrix and the program is running, and maybe we can't even introduce a virus to try changing anything. But all is not lost, because we can extricate ourselves from the battle zone and battle fields and pursue our photography in peace. If we need to go into the war zone, there are endless models to emulate, and after all is said and done, photographers will still be on the front lines, and even more than may be expected.
But as for me, I am staying in the Command center and at Master control, because someone has to receive your images, and send them out across the world.
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