Jonathanjk’s Weblog

This is related to my previous post about photographing in public places.  Today I went into the city centre and took some research pictures for a project I’m beginning about technology.  I must have been shooting for an hour and 3 city rangers were walking in my direction.  Initially I thought somebody had called them because of their irrationally placed sense of fear with the mighty DSLR.  Which isn’t helped with the direction the government takes when it comes to photography in public places or with TV/newspaper reports.

I was pleasantly surprised when all they did was say hello as they walked past.  This is a big difference to when I was first stopped in the city around 3 months ago and told I needed a permit from the council to photograph in a public place and that I needed people’s permission to take a picture of them!  This is a lie btw.

But then you read things like this in other cities:

http://www.epuk.org/News/818/police-officer-forced-photographer-to-delete-images

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/photography_law/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/police_photographer_stops/

To be fair though, it can work both ways.  I don’t care if plod have an image of me, they have tons already on CCTV.

For the most part I just hope public servants simply haven’t been reading up on the law and are ill-informed when it comes to photography in public.  It was a little unsettling for me to simply take pictures today.  I was wondering when somebody was going to stop me, question me or ask me what I’m doing (besides the obvious).  But in the end I did actually get stopped twice, but by other photographers!

Yet with all the things happening in society, photography is one of the current evils, its a sad state of affairs and something I would like to help turn around.  Something which I can only hope to do by continually taking pictures and having more days like today.  The wrong thing for me and other photographers to do is stay at home.

Can you see the danger?

There are even children in this image and the Rangers are behind me at this point. I make the point about children because they are in fact not given any protection different from adults in a public space, though with the way the news bangs on about pedophiles you would think otherwise. Of course any decent photographer would stop taking pictures and respect parents wishes if they ask you not too.

NOTE: I do actually get asked *every* week if I am a Pedophile (sad state of affairs to link photography now with sexual deviance) with another project I shoot in the city centre concerning youth culture. I’m only a 27 years old! I’ll be talking more about this project in a later blog entry.